AND EVEN NOW 

BY 

MAX BEERBOHM 



E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
New York 



Copyright, 1921, 
By E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

All riffhte reserved 






-j.V'- 



THIS EDITION IS LIMITED 
TO ISOO COPIES 



OCT 27 1921 



Printed in the United States of America 



©CU627480 






TO 

MY WIFE 



NOTE 

1 offer here some of the essays that I have written in 
the course of the past ten years. While I was collecting 
them and (quite patiently) reading them again, I found 
that a few of them were in direct reference to the moments 
at which they were severally composed. It was clear that 
these must have their dates affixed to them. And for sake 
of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, 
have thought I need not exclude all such topical remarks 
as in them too were uttered, nor throw into a past tense 
such of those remarks as I have retained. Perhaps a book 
of essays ought to seem as if it had been written a few 

days before publication. On the other hand but this 

is a Note, not a Preface. 

M. B. 

Rapallo, 1920. 



CONTENTS 



A RELIC (1918) 

'HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' (1910) 

MOBLED KING (1911) 

K0LNIYAT8CH (1913) 

NO. 2. THE PINES (1914) 

A LETTER THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN (1914) 

BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS (1914) . 

THE GOLDEN DRUGGET (1918) . 

HOSTS AND QUESTS (1918) 

A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED BY VERY 

SERVANTS (1918) . 

GOING OUT FOR A WALK (1918) 

QUIA IMPERFECTUM (1918) 

SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE (1919) 

'A CLERGYMAN* (1918) . 

THE CRIME (1920) 

IN HOMES UNBLE8T (1920) 

WILLIAM AND MARY (1920) 

ON SPEAKING FRENCH (191*\ 

LAUGHTER (1920) . 

ix 



• 


PAGE 

1 


. 


13 


. 


27 


. 


47 


. 


55 


1914) . 


89 


. 


99 


. 


115 


. 


125 


EMINENT MEN (1918) 


147 


. 


161 


. 


187 


. 


195 


. 


219 


. 


231 


. 


243 


. 


255 


. 


265 


. 


287 


, 


301 



A EELIC 



A RELIC 

1918. 

YESTERDAY I found in a cupboard an old, 
small, battered portmanteau which, by 
the initials on it, I recognised as my own 
property. The lock appeared to have been forced. 
I dimly remembered having forced it myself, with 
a poker, in my hot youth, after some journey in 
which I had lost the key; and this act of violence 
was probably the reason why the trunk had so 
long ago ceased to travel. I unstrapped it, not 
without dust; it exhaled the faint scent of its long 
closure; it contained a tweed suit of Late Victorian 
pattern, some bills, some letters, a collar-stud, and 
— something which, after I had wondered for a 
moment or two what on earth it was, caused me 
suddenly to murmur, * Down below, the sea rustled 
to and fro over the shingle.' 

Strange that these words had, year after long 
year, been existing in some obscure cell at the back 
of my brain ! — forgotten but all the while existing, 
like the trunk in that cupboard. What released 
them, what threw open the cell door, was nothing 
but the fragment of a fan; just the butt-end of 



4 AND EVEN NOW ' 

an inexpensive fan. The sticks are of white bone, 
clipped together with a semicircular ring that is 
not silver. They are neatly oval at the base, but 
variously jagged at the other end. The longest of 
them measures perhaps two inches. Ring and all, 
they have no market value; for a farthing is the 
least coin in our currency. And yet, though I had 
so long forgotten them, for me they are not worth- 
less. They touch a chord. . . Lest this confession 
raise false hopes in the reader, I add that I did not 
know their owner. 

I did once see her, and in Normandy, and by 
moonlight, and her name was Angelique. She was 
graceful, she was even beautiful. I was but nine- 
teen years old. Yet even so I cannot say that she 
impressed me favourably. I was seated at a table 
of a cafe on the terrace of a casino. I sat facing 
the sea, with my back to the casino. I sat listening 
to the quiet sea, which I had crossed that morning. 
The hour was late, there were few people about. 
I heard the swing-door behind me flap open, and 
was aware of a sharp snapping and crackling sound 
as a lady in white passed quickly by me. I stared 
at her erect thin back and her agitated elbows. A 
short fat man passed in pursuit of her — an elderly 
man in a black alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw 
that she had left a trail of little white things on the 
asphalt. I watched the efforts of the agonised 
short fat man to overtake her as she swept wraith- 



A RELIC 5 

like away to the distant end of the terrace. What 
was the matter? What had made her so spectacu- 
larly angry with him? The three or four waiters 
of the cafe were exchanging cynical smiles and 
shrugs, as waiters will. I tried to feel cynical, but 
was thrilled with excitement, with wonder and 
curiosity. The woman out yonder had doubled 
on her tracks. She had not slackened her furious 
speed, but the man waddlingly contrived to keep 
pace with her now. With every moment they 
became more distinct, and the prospect that they 
would presently pass by me, back into the casino, 
gave me that physical tension which one feels on 
a wayside platform at the imminent passing of an 
express. In the rushingly enlarged vision I had of 
them, the wrath on the woman's face was even 
more saliently the main thing than I had supposed 
it would be. That very hard Parisian face must 
have been as white as the powder that coated it. 
*Ecoute, Angelique,' gasped the perspiring bour- 
geois, 'ecoute, je te supplie — ' The swing-door 
received them and was left swinging to and fro. 
I wanted to follow, but had not paid for my bock. 
I beckoned my waiter. On his way to me he 
stooped down and picked up something which, 
with a smile and a shrug, he laid on my table: 
'II semble que Mademoiselle ne s'en servira plus.' 
This is the thing I now write of, and at sight of 
it I understood why there had been that snapping 



6 AND EVEN NOW 

and crackling, and what the white fragments on 
the ground were. 

I hurried through the rooms, hoping to see a 
continuation of that drama — a scene of appease- 
ment, perhaps, or of fury still implacable. But the 
two oddly-assorted players were not performing 
there. My waiter had told me he had not seen 
either of them before. I suppose they had arrived 
that day. But I was not destined to see either of 
them again. They went away, I suppose, next 
morning; jointly or singly; singly, I imagine. 

They made, however, a prolonged stay in my 
young memory, and would have done so even had 
I not had that tangible memento of them. Who 
were they, those two of whom that one strange 
glimpse had befallen me.'^ What, I wondered, was 
the previous history of each.^ What, in particular, 
had all that tragic pother been about.'* Mile. 
Ang^lique I guessed to be thirty years old, her 
friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was 
as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision — 
the man's fat shiny bewildered face; the taut 
white face of the woman, the hard red line of her 
mouth, the eyes that were not flashing, but posi- 
tively dull, with rage. I presumed that the fan 
had been a present from him, and a recent present 
— bought perhaps that very day, after their arrival 
in the town. But what, what had he done that 
she should break it between her hands, scattering 



A RELIC 7 

the splinters as who should sow dragon's teeth? 
I could not believe he had done anything much 
amiss. I imagined her grievance a trivial one. 
But this did not make the case less engrossing. 
Again and again I would take the fan-stump from 
my pocket, examining it on the palm of my hand, 
or between finger and thumb, hoping to read the 
mystery it had been mixed up in, so that I might 
reveal that mystery to the world. To the world, 
yes; nothing less than that. I was determined to 
make a story of what I had seen — a conte in the 
manner of great Guy de Maupassant. Now and 
again, in the course of the past year or so, it had 
occurred to me that I might be a writer. But I 
had not felt the impulse to sit down and write 
something. I did feel that impulse now. It would 
indeed have been an irresistible impulse if I had 
known just what to write. 

I felt I might know at any moment, and had but 
to give my mind to it. Maupassant wi:s an im- 
peccable artist, but I think the secret of the hold 
he had on the young men of my day was not so 
much that we discerned his cunning as that we 
delighted in the simplicity which his cunning 
achieved. I had read a great number of his short 
stories, but none that had made me feel as though 
I, if I were a writer, mightn't have written it myself. 
Maupassant had an European reputation. It was 
pleasing, it was soothing and gratifying, to feel that 



8 AND EVEN NOW 

one could at any time win an equal fame if one 
chose to set pen to paper. And now, suddenly, 
the spring had been touched in me, the time was 
come. I was grateful for the fluke by which I had 
witnessed on the terrace that evocative scene. I 
looked forward to reading the MS. of *The Fan' — 
to-morrow, at latest. I was not wildly ambitious. 
I was not inordinately vain. I knew I couldn't 
ever, with the best will in the world, write like Mr. 
George Meredith. Those wondrous works of his, 
seething with wit, with poetry and philosophy and 
what not, never had beguiled me with the sense 
that I might do something similar. I had full con- 
sciousness of not being a philosopher, of not being 
a poet, and of not being a wit. Well, Maupassant 
was none of these things. He was just an observer 
like me. Of course he was a good deal older than I, 
and had observed a good deal more. But it seemed 
to me that he was not my superior in knowledge of 
life. I knew all about life through him. 

Dimly, the initial paragraph of my tale floated in 
my mind. I — not exactly I myself, but rather that 
impersonal je familiar to me through Maupassant 
— was to be sitting at that table, with a bock before 
me, just as I had sat. Four or five short sentences 
would give the whole scene. One of these I had 
quite definitely composed. You have already heard 
it. 'Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over 
the shingle.' 



A RELIC 9 

These words, which pleased me much, were to do 
double duty. They were to recur. They were to 
be, by a fine stroke, the very last words of my tale, 
their tranquillity striking a sharp ironic contrast 
with the stress of what had just been narrated. I 
had, you see, advanced further in the form of my 
tale than in the substance. But even the form was 
as yet vague. What, exactly, was to happen after 
Mile. Angelique and M. Joumand (as I provision- 
ally called him) had rushed back past me into the 
casino.^ It was clear that I must hear the whole 
inner history from the lips of one or the other of 
them. Which .^ Should M. Joumand stagger out 
on to the terrace, sit down heavily at the table 
next to mine, bury his head in his hands, and 
presently, in broken words, blurt out to me all 
that might be of interest .^^ . . . 

' * ' And I tell you I gave up everything for her — 
everything." He stared at me with his old hope- 
less eyes. "She is more than the fiend I have 
described to you. Yet I swear to you, monsieur, 
that if I had anything left to give, it should be 
hers." 

'Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over 
the shingle.' 

Or should the lady herself be my informant? 
For a while, I rather leaned to this alternative. It 
was more exciting, it seemed to make the writer 
more signally a man of the world. On the other 
hand, it was less simple to manage. Wronged 



10 AND EVEN NOW 

persons might be ever so communicative, but I 
surmised that persons in the wrong were reticent. 
Mile. Angelique, therefore, would have to be 
modified by me in appearance and behaviour, toned 
down, touched up; and poor M. Joumand must 
look like a man of whom one could believe any- 
thing. . . . 

'She ceased speaking. She gazed down at 
the fragments of her fan, and then, as though 
finding in them an image of her own life, whispered, 
"To think what I once was, monsieur! — what, but 
for him, I might be, even now!" She buried her 
face in her hands, then stared out into the night. 
Suddenly she uttered a short, harsh laugh. 

*Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over 
the shingle.' 

I decided that I must choose the first of these 
two ways. It was the less chivalrous as well as 
the less lurid way, but clearly it was the more 
artistic as well as the easier. The 'chose vue,' the 
'tranche de la vie' — this was the thing to aim at. 
Honesty was the best policy. I must be nothing 
if not merciless. Maupassant was nothing if not 
merciless. He would not have spared Mile. An- 
gelique. Besides, why should I libel M. Joumand .f^ 
Poor — no, not poor M. Joumand ! I warned myself 
against pitying him. One touch of ' sentimentality,' 
and I should be lost. M. Joumand was ridiculous. 
I must keep him so. But — what was his position 
in life? Was he a lawyer perhaps? — or the pro- 



y 



A RELIC 11 

prietor of a shop in the Rue de Rivoli? I toyed 
with the possibility that he kept a fan shop — that 
the business had once been a prosperous one, 
but had gone down, down, because of his in- 
fatuation for this woman to whom he was always 
giving fans — which she always smashed. ... * * 'Ah 
monsieur, cruel and ungrateful to me though she 
'is, I swear to you that if I had anything left to 
^give, it should be hers; but," he stared at me with 
I his old hopeless eyes, "the fan she broke to- 
' night was the last — the last, monsieur — of my 
stock." Down below,' — but I pulled myself to- 
gether, 'and asked pardon of my Muse. 

It may be that I had offended her by my fooling. 
Or it may be that she had a sisterly desire to shield 
Mile. Angelique from my mordant art. Or it may 
be that she was bent on saving M. de Maupassant 
from a dangerous rivalry. Anyway, she withheld 
from me the inspiration I had so confidently solic- 
ited. I could not think what had led up to that 
scene on the terrace. I tried hard and soberly. 
I turned the ' chose vue ' over and over in my mind, 
day by day, and the fan-stump over and over in 
my hand. But the 'chose a figurer' — what, oh 
what, was that? Nightly I revisited the cafe, and 
sat there with an open mind — a mind wide-open to 
catch the idea that should drop into it like a ripe 
golden plum. The plum did not ripen. The mind 
remained wide-open for a week or more, but nothing 



12 AND EVEN NOW 

except that phrase about the sea rustled to and 
fro in it. 

A full quarter of a century has gone by. M. 
Joumand's death, so far too fat was he all those 
years ago, may be presumed. A temper so violent 
as Mile. Angelique's must surely have brought its 
owner to the grave, long since. But here, all un- 
changed, the stump of her fan is; and once more 
I turn it over and over in my hand, not learning its 
secret — no, nor even trying to, now. The chord 
this relic strikes in me is not one of curiosity as to 
that old quarrel, but (if you will forgive me) one 
of tenderness for my first effort to write, and for 
my first hopes of excellence. 



'HOW SHALL I WORD IT? 



'HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' 

igio. 

IT would seem that I am one of those travellers 
for whom the railway bookstall does not 
cater. Whenever I start on a journey, I 
find that my choice lies between well-printed books 
which I have no wish to read, and well-written 
books which I could not read without permanent 
injury to my eyesight. The keeper of the book- 
stall, seeing me gaze vaguely along his shelves, sug- 
gests that I should take 'Fen Country Fanny' or 
else 'The Track of Blood' and have done with it. 
Not wishing to hurt his feelings, I refuse these 
works on the plea that I have read them. Whereon 
he, divining despite me that I am a superior person, 
says 'Here is a nice little handy edition of More's 
"Utopia"' or 'Carlyle's "French Revolution" ' 
and again I make some excuse. What pleasure 
could I get from trying to cope with a masterpiece 
printed in diminutive grey-ish type on a semi- 
transparent little grey-ish page.^^ I relieve the 
bookstall of nothing but a newspaper or two. 

The other day, however, my eye and fancy were 
caught by a book entitled 'How Shall I Word It.?' 

15 



16 AND EVEN NOW 

and sub-entitled *A Complete Letter Writer for 
Men and Women.' I had never read one of these 
manuals, but had often heard that there was a 
great and constant 'demand' for them. So I 
demanded this one. It is no great fun in itself. 
The writer is no fool. He has evidently a natural 
talent for writing letters. His style is, for the 
most part, discreet and easy. If you were a young 
man writing * to Father of Girl he wishes to Marry ' 
or * thanking Fiancee for Present' or * reproaching 
Fiancee for being a Flirt,' or if you were a mother 
* asking Governess her Qualifications' or 'replying 
to Undesirable Invitation for her Child,' or indeed 
if you were in any other one of the crises which 
this book is designed to alleviate, you might 
copy out and post the specially-provided letter 
without making yourself ridiculous in the eyes of 
its receiver — unless, of course, he or she also 
possessed a copy of the book. But — well, can you 
conceive any one copying out and posting one of 
these letters, or even taking it as the basis for 
composition.^ You cannot. That shows how little 
you know of your fellow-creatures. Not you nor 
I can plumb the abyss at the bottom of which such 
humility is possible. Nevertheless, as we know by 
that great and constant 'demand,' there the abyss 
is, and there multitudes are at the bottom of 
it. Let's peer down. . . No, all is darkness. But 
faintly, if we listen hard, is borne up to us a sound 



*HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' 17 

of the scratching of innumerable pens — pens whose 
wielders are all trying, as the author of this hand- 
book urges them, to 'be original, fresh, and in- 
teresting' by dint of more or less strict adherence 
to sample. 

Giddily you draw back from the edge of the 
abyss. Come! — here is a thought to steady you. 
The mysterious great masses of helpless folk for 
whom 'How Shall I Word It' is written are sound 
at heart, delicate in feeling, anxious to please, most 
loth to wound. For it must be presumed that the 
author's style of letter- writing is informed as much 
by a desire to give his public what it needs, and 
will pay for, as by his own beautiful nature; and 
in the course of all the letters that he dictates you 
will find not one harsh word, not one ignoble 
thought or unkind insinuation. In all of them, 
though so many are for the use of persons placed 
in the most trying circumstances, and some of them 
are for persons writhing under a sense of intolerable 
injury, sweetness and light do ever reign. Even 
'yours truly, Jacob Langton,' in his 'letter to his 
Daughter's Mercenary Fiance,' mitigates the stern- 
ness of his tone by the remark that his 'task is 
inexpressibly painful.' And he, Mr. Langton, is 
the one writer who lets the post go out on his wrath. 
When Horace Masterton, of Thorpe Road, Putney, 
receives from Miss Jessica Weir, of Fir Villa, 
Blackheath, a letter 'declaring her Change of 



18 AND EVEN NOW 

Feelings,' does he upbraid her? No; *it was 
honest and brave of you to write to me so straight- 
forwardly and at the back of my mind I know you 
have done what is best. ... I give you back your 
freedom only at your desire. God bless you, dear.* 
Not less admirable is the behaviour, in similar case, 
of Cecil Grant (14, Glover Street, Streatham). 
Suddenly, as a bolt from the blue, comes a letter 
from Miss Louie Hawke (Elm View, Deerhurst), 
breaking off her betrothal to him. Haggard, he 
sits down to his desk; his pen traverses the note- 
paper — calling down curses on Louie and on all her 
sex.^ No; 'one cannot say good-bye for ever 
without deep regret to days that have been so full 
of happiness. I must thank you sincerely for all 
your great kindness to me. . . . With every sin- 
cere wish for your future happiness,' he bestows 
complete freedom on Miss Hawke. And do not 
imagine that in the matter of self-control and 
sympathy, of power to understand all and pardon 
all, the men are lagged behind by the women. 
Miss Leila Johnson (The Manse, Carlyle) has ob- 
served in Leonard Wace (Dover Street, Saltburn) 
a certain coldness of demeanour; yet 'I do not 
blame you; it is probably your nature'; and 
Leila in her sweet forbearance is typical of all the 
other pained women in these pages : she is but one 
of a crowd of heroines. 

Face to face with all this perfection, the not 



'HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' 19 



perfect reader begins to crave some little outburst 
of wrath, of hatred or malice, from one of these 
imaginary ladies and gentlemen. He longs for — 
how shall he word it? — a glimpse of some bad 
motive, of some little lapse from dignity. Often, 
passing by a pillar-box, I have wished I could un- 
lock it and carry away its contents, to be studied 
at my leisure. I have always thought such a haul 
would abound in things fascinating to a student 
of human nature. One night, not long ago, I 
took a waxen impression of the lock of the pillar- 
box nearest to my house, and had a key made. 
This implement I have as yet lacked either the 
courage or the opportunity to use. And now I 
think I shall throw it away. . . . No, I shan't. 
I refuse, after all, to draw my inference that the 
bulk of the British public writes always in the 
manner of this handbook. Even if they all have 
beautiful natures they must sometimes be sent 
slightly astray by inferior impulses, just as are you 
and I. 

And, if err they must, surely it were well they 
should know how to do it correctly and forcibly. 
I suggest to our author that he should sprinkle his 
next edition with a few less righteous examples, 
thereby both purging his book of its monotony and 
somewhat justifying its sub-title. Like most people 
who are in the habit of writing things to be printed, 
I have not the knack of writing really good letters. 



20 AND EVEN NOW 

But let me crudely indicate the sort of thing that 
our manual needs. . . . 



Letter from Poor Man to obtain Money from 
Rich One. 

[The English law is particularly hard on what is called blackmail. 
It is therefore essential that the applicant should write nothing that 
might afterwards be twisted to incriminate him. — Ed.] 

Dear Sir, 

To-day, as I was turning out a drawer in my 
attic, I came across a letter which by a curious 
chance fell into my hands some years ago, and 
which, in the stress of grave pecuniary embarrass- 
ment, had escaped my memory. It is a letter 
written by yourself to a lady, and the date shows it 
to have been written shortly after your marriage. 
It is of a confidential nature, and might, I fear, if it 
fell into the wrong hands, be cruelly misconstrued. 
I would wish you to have the satisfaction of de- 
stroying it in person. At first I thought of sending 
it on to you by post. But I know how happy you 
are in your domestic life; and probably your wife 
and you, in your perfect mutual trust, are in the 
habit of opening each other's letters. Therefore, to 
avoid risk, I would prefer to hand the document to 
you personally. I will not ask you to come to my 
attic, where I could not offer you such hospitality 
as is due to a man of your wealth and position. You 



*HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' 21 

will be so good as to meet me at 3.0 a.m. (sharp) 
to-morrow (Thursday) beside the tenth lamp-post 
to the left on the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge; 
at which hour and place we shall not be disturbed. 
I am, dear Sir, 

Yours respectfully, 
James Gridge. 

Letter from Young Man refusing to pay his 
Tailor's Bill. 

Mr, Eustace Davenant has received the half- 
servile, half -insolent screed which Mr. Yardley has 
addressed to him. Let Mr. Yardley cease from 
crawling on his knees and shaking his fist. Neither 
this posture nor this gesture can wring one bent 
farthing from the pockets of Mr. Davenant, who 
was a minor at the time when that series of ill- 
made suits was supplied to him and will hereafter, 
as in the past, shout (without prejudice) from the 
house-tops that of all the tailors in London Mr. 
Yardley is at once the most grasping and the least 
competent. 

Letter to thank Author for Inscribed Copy 
OF Book 

Dear Mr. Emanuel Flower, 

It was kind of you to think of sending me a copy 
of your new book. It would have been kinder still 



22 AND EVEN NOW 

to think again and abandon that project. I am a 
man of gentle instincts, and do not Hke to tell you 
that 'A Flight into Arcady' (of which I have 
skimmed a few pages, thus wasting two or three 
minutes of my not altogether worthless time) 
is trash. On the other hand, I am determined 
that you shall not be able to go around boasting 
to your friends, if you have any, that this work was 
not condemned, derided, and dismissed by your 
sincere well-wisher, Wrexford Cripps. 



Letter to Member of Parliament Unseated 
AT General Election 

Dear Mr. Pobsby-Burford, 

Though I am myself an ardent Tory, I cannot but 
rejoice in the crushing defeat you have just suffered 
in West Odgetown. There are moments when 
political conviction is overborne by personal 
sentiment; and this is one of them. Your loss of 
the seat that you held is the more striking by reason 
of the splendid manner in which the northern and 
eastern divisions of Odgetown have been wrested 
from the Liberal Party. The great bulk of the 
newspaper-reading public will be puzzled by your 
extinction in the midst of our party's triumph. 
But then, the great mass of the newspaper-reading 
public has not met you. I have. You will 
probably not remember me. You are the sort of 



*HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' 23 

man who would not remember anybody who might 
not be of some definite use to him. Such, at least, 
was one of the impressions you made on me when 
I met you last summer at a dinner given by our 
friends the Pelhams. Among the other things in 
you that struck me were the blatant pomposity of 
your manner, your appalling flow of cheap plati- 
tudes, and your hoggish lack of ideas. It is such 
men as you that lower the tone of public life. And I 
am sure that in writing to you thus I am but ex- 
pressing what is felt, without distinction of party, 
by all who sat with you in the late Parliament. 

The one person in whose behalf I regret your 
withdrawal into private life is your wife, whom I 
had the pleasure of taking in to the aforesaid 
dinner. It was evident to me that she was a 
woman whose spirit was well-nigh broken by her 
conjunction with you. Such remnants of cheer- 
fulness as were in her I attributed to the Parlia- 
mentary duties which kept you out of her sight for 
so very many hours daily. I do not like to think 
of the fate to which the free and independent 
electors of West Odgetown have just condemned 
her. Only, remember this : chattel of yours though 
she is, and timid and humble, she despises you in 
her heart. 

I am, dear Mr. Pobsby-Burford, 
Yours very truly, 

Harold Thistlake. 



24 AND EVEN NOW 

Letter from Young Lady in Answer to Invi- 
tation FROM Old Schoolmistress. 

My dear Miss Price, 

How awfully sweet of you to ask me to stay 
with you for a few days but how can you think 
I may have forgotten you for of course I think of 
you so very often and of the three ears I spent 
at your school because it is such a joy not to be 
there any longer and if one is at all down it bucks 
one up derectly to remember that thats all over 
atanyrate and that one has enough food to nurrish 
one and not that awful monottany of life and not 
the petty fogging daily tirrany you went in for 
and I can imagin no greater thrill and luxury in a 
way than to come and see the whole dismal grind 
still going on but without me being in it but this 
would be rather beastly of me wouldnt it so please 
dear Miss Price dont expect me and do excuse 
mistakes of English Composition and Spelling and 
etcetra in your affectionate old pupil, 

Emily Therese Lynn-Royston. 

ps, I often rite to people telling them where I 
was edducated and highly reckomending you. 



*HOW SHALL I WORD IT? 25 

Letter in Acknowledgement of Wedding 
Present. 

Dear Lady Amblesham, 

Who gives quickly, says the old proverb, gives 
twice. For this reason I have purposely delayed 
writing to you, lest I should appear to thank you 
more than once for the small, cheap, hideous 
present you sent me on the occasion of my recent 
wedding. Were you a poor woman, that little bowl 
of ill-imitated Dresden china would convict you of 
tastelessness merely; were you a blind woman, 
of nothing but an odious parsimony. As you have 
normal eyesight and more than normal wealth, 
your gift to me proclaims you at once a Philistine 
and a miser (or rather did so proclaim you until, 
less than ten seconds after I had unpacked it from 
its wrappings of tissue paper, I took it to the open 
window and had the satisfaction of seeing it 
shattered to atoms on the pavement). But stay! 
I perceive a possible flaw in my argument. Perhaps 
you were guided in your choice by a definite wish 
to insult me. I am sure, on reflection, that this 
was so. / shall not forget. 

Yours, etc., 
Cynthia Beaumarsh. 

PS. My husband asked me to tell you to warn Lord 
Amblesham to keep out of his way or to assume 



26 AND EVEN NOW 

some disguise so complete that he will not be 
recognised by him and horsewhipped. 

PPS. I am sending copies of this letter to the 
principal London and provincial newspapers. 

Letter from . . . 

But enough! I never thought I should be so 
strong in this line. I had not foreseen such copi- 
ousness and fatal fluency. Never again will I tap 
these deep dark reservoirs in a character that had 
always seemed to me, on the whole, so amiable. 



MOBLED KING 



MOBLED KING 

igii. 

JUST as a memorial, just to perpetuate in 
one's mind the dead man in whose image 
and honour it has been erected, this statue 
is better than any that I have seen. . . No, pedan- 
tic reader : I ought not to have said ' than any other 
that I have seen.' Except in shrouded and dis- 
torted outKne, I have not seen this statue. 

Not as an image, then, can it be extolled by 
me. And I am bound to say that even as an 
honour it seems to me more than dubious. Com- 
missioned and designed and chiselled and setup 
in all reverence, it yet serves very well the pur- 
pose of a guy. This does not surprise you. You 
are familiar with a host of statues that are open 
to precisely that objection. Westminster Abbey 
abounds in them. They confront you through- 
out London and the provinces. They stud the 
Continent. Rare indeed is the statue that can 
please the well-wishers of the person portrayed. 
Nor in every case is the sculptor to blame. There 
is in the art of sculpture itself a quality intractable 
to the aims of personal portraiture. Sculpture, just 

29 



30 AND EVEN NOW 

as it cannot fitly record the gesture of a moment, is 
discommoded by personal idiosyncrasies. The de- 
tails that go to compose this or that gentleman's ap- 
pearance — such as the little wrinkles around his 
eyes, and the way his hair grows, and the special 
convolutions of his ears — all these, presentable on 
canvas, or evocable by words, are not right matter 
for the chisel or for the mould and furnace. Trans- 
lated into terms of bronze or marble, howsoever 
cunningly, these slight and trivial things cease to be 
trivial and slight. They assume a ludicrous im- 
portance. No man is worthy to be reproduced 
as bust or statue. And if sculpture is too august 
to deal with what a man has received from his 
Maker, how much less ought it to be bothered 
about what he has received from his hosier and 
tailor! Sculpture's province is the soul. The 
most concrete, it is also the most spiritual of the 
arts. The very heaviness and stubbornness of its 
material, precluding it from happy dalliance with 
us fleeting individual creatures, fit it to cope with 
that which in mankind is permanent and universal. 
It can through the symbol give us incomparably 
the type. . Wise is that sculptor who, when portray 
an individual he must, treats arbitrarily the mere 
actual husk, and strives but to show the soul. 
Of course, he must first catch that soul. What 
M. Rodin knew about the character and career of 
Mr. George Wyndham, or about the character and 



MOBLED KING 31 

career of Mr. Bernard Shaw, was not, I hazard, 
worth knowing; and Mr. Shaw is handed down by 
him to posterity as a sort of bearded lady, and 
Mr. Wyndham as a sort of beardless one. But 
about Honore de Balzac he knew much. Balzac 
he understood. Balzac's work, Balzac's soul, in 
that great rugged figure aspiring and indeflexible, 
he gave us with a finality that could have been 
achieved through no other art than sculpture. 

There is a close kinship between that statue 
of Balzac and this statue of which I am to tell you. 
Both induce, above all, a profound sense of unrest, 
of heroic will to overcome all obstacles. The will 
to compass self-expression, the will to emerge from 
darkness to light, from formlessness to form, from 
nothing to everything — this it is that I find in 
either statue; and this it is in virtue of which 
the Balzac has unbeknown a brother on the Italian 
seaboard. 

Here stands — or rather struggles — on his ped- 
estal this younger brother, in strange contrast with 
the scenery about him. Mildly, behind his back, 
the sea laps the shingle. Mildly, in front of him, 
on the other side of the road, rise some of those 
mountains whereby the Earth, before she settled 
down to cool, compassed — she, too — some sort of 
self-expression. Mildly around his pedestal, among 
rusty anchors strewn there on the grass between 
road and beach, sit the fishermen, mending their 



32 AND EVEN NOW 

nets or their sails, or whittling bits of wood. Wliat 

will you say of these fishermen when but I 

outstrip my narrative. 

I had no inkling of tragedy when first I came to 
the statue. I did not even know it was a statue. 
I had made by night the short journey from Genoa 
to this place beside the sea; and, driving along the 
coast-road to the hotel that had been recommended, 
I passed what in the starlight looked like nothing 
but an elderly woman mounted on a square pedestal 
and gazing out seaward — a stout, elderly, lonely 
woman in a poke bonnet, indescribable except by 
that old Victorian term *a party,' and as unlike 
Balzac's younger brother as only Sarah Gamp's 
elder sister could be. How, I wondered in my hotel, 
came the elder sister of Sarah Gamp to be here in 
Liguria and in the twentieth century .^^ How 
clomb she, puffing and panting, on to that pedestal? 
For what argosy of gin was she straining her old 
eyes seaward .^^ I knew there would be no sleep 
for me until I had solved these problems; and I 
went forth afoot along the way I had come. The 
moon had risen; and presently I saw in the star- 
light the * party' who so intrigued me. Eminent, 
amorphous, mysterious, there she stood, immobile, 
voluminous, ghastly beneath the moon. By a slight 
shoreward lift of crinoline, as against the seaward 
protrusion of poke bonnet, a grotesque balance was 
given to the unshapely shape of her. For all her 



MOBLED KING 33 

uncanniness, I thought I had never seen any one, 
male or female, old or young, look so hopelessly 
common. I felt that by daylight a noble vulgarity 
might be hers. In the watches of the night she was 
hopelessly, she was transcendently common. 

Little by little, as I came nearer, she ceased to 
illude me, and I began to think of her as *it.' 
What * it ' was, however, I knew not until I was at 
quite close quarters to the pedestal it rose from. 
There, on the polished granite, was carved this 
legend : 

A 
UMBERTO 1"^ 

And instinctively, as my eye travelled up, my 
hand leapt to the salute; for I stood before the 
veiled image of a dead king, and had been guilty 
of a misconception that dishonoured him. 

Standing respectfully at one angle and another, 
I was able to form, by the outlines of the grey 
sheeting that enveloped him, some rough notion of 
his posture and his costume. Round what was 
evidently his neck the sheeting was constricted 
by ropes; and the height and girth of the bundle 
above — to half-closed eyes, even now, an averted 
poke-bonnet — gave token of a tall helmet with a 
luxuriant shock of plumes waving out behind. 
Immediately beneath the ropes, the breadth and 
sharpness of the bundle hinted at epaulettes. 



34 AND EVEN NOW 

And the protrusion that had seemed to be that 
of a wind-blown crinoHne was caused, I thought, 
by the king having his left hand thrust well out 
to grasp the hilt of his inclined sword. Altogether, 
I had soon builded a clear enough idea of his 
aspect; and I promised myself a curious gratifica- 
tion in comparing anon this idea with his aspect 
as it really was. 

Yes, I took it for granted that the expectant 
statue was to be unveiled within the next few 
days. I was glad to be in time — not knowing in 
how terribly good time I was — for the ceremony. 
Not since my early childhood had I seen the 
unveiling of a statue; and on that occasion I had 
struck a discordant note by weeping bitterly. I 
daresay you know that statue of William Harvey 
which stands on the Leas at Folkestone. You say 
you were present at the unveiling .^^ Well, I was the 
child who cried. I had been told that William 
Harvey was a great and good man who discovered 
the circulation of the blood; and my mind had 
leapt, in all the swiftness of its immaturity, to the 
conclusion that his statue would be a bright blood- 
red. Cruel was the thrill of dismay I had when at 
length the cord was pulled and the sheeting slid 
down, revealing so dull a sight. . . 

Contemplating the veiled Umberto, I remem- 
bered that sight, remembered those tears unworthy 
(as my nurse told me) of a little gentleman. Years 



MOBLED KING 35 

had passed. I was grown older and wiser. I had 
learnt to expect less of life. There was no fear 
that I should disgrace myself in the matter of 
Umberto. 

I was not so old, though, nor so wise, as I am 
now. I expected more than there is of Italian 
speed, and less than there is of Italian subtlety. A 
whole year has passed since first I set eyes on veiled 
Umberto. And Umberto is still veiled. 

And veiled for more than a whole year, as I 
now know, had Umberto been before my coming. 
Four years before that, the municipal council, it 
seems, had voted the money for him. His father, 
of sensational memory, was here already, in the 
middle of the main piazza, of course. And Gari- 
baldi was hard by; so was Mazzini; so was Cavour. 
Umberto was still implicit in a block of marble, 
high upon one of the mountains of Carrara. The 
task of educing him was given to a promising young 
sculptor who lived here. Down came the block of 
marble, and was transported to the studio of the 
promising young sculptor; and out, briskly enough, 
mustachios and all, came Umberto. He looked 
very regal, I am sure, as he stood glaring around 
with his prominent marble eyeballs, and snuffing 
the good fresh air of the world as far as might 
be into shallow marble nostrils. He looked very 
authoritative and fierce and solemn, I am sure. 
He made, anyhow, a deep impression on the mayor 



36 AND EVEN NOW 

and councillors, and the only question was as to 
just where he should be erected. The granite 
pedestal had already been hewn and graven ; but a 
worthy site was to seek. Outside the railway 
station.^ He would obstruct the cabs. In the 
Giardino Pubblico.'^ He would clash with Garibaldi. 
Every councillor had a pet site, and every other 
one a pet objection to it. That strip of waste 
ground where the fishermen sat pottering.? It was 
too humble, too far from the centre of things. 
Meanwhile, Umberto stayed in the studio. Dust 
settled on his epaulettes. A year went by. Spiders 
ventured to spin their webs from his plumes to his 
mustachios. Another year went by. Whenever 
the councillors had nothing else to talk about they 
talked about the site for Umberto. 

Presently they became aware that among the 
poorer classes of the town had arisen a certain 
hostility to the statue. The councillors suspected 
that the priesthood had been at work. The 
forces of reaction against the forces of progress! 
Very well ! The councillors hurriedly decided that 
the best available site, on the whole, was that 
strip of waste ground where the fishermen sat pot- 
tering. The pedestal was promptly planted. Um- 
berto was promptly wrapped up, put on a lorry, 
wheeled to the place, and hoisted into position. 
The date of the unveiling was fixed. The mayor 
I am told, had already composed his speech, and 



MOBLED KING 37 

was getting it by heart. Around the pedestal the 
fishermen sat pottering. It was not observed that 
they received any visits from the priests. 

But priests are subtle; and it is a fact that 
three days before the date of the unveiling the 
fishermen went, all in their black Sunday clothes, 
and claimed audience of the mayor. He laid aside 
the MS. of his speech, and received them affably. 
Old Agostino, their spokesman, he whose face is so 
marvellously wrinkled, lifted his quavering voice. 
He told the mayor, with great respect, that the 
rights of the fishermen had been violated. That 
piece of ground had for hundreds of years belonged 
to them. They had not been consulted about that 
statue. They did not want it there. It was in 
the way, and must (said Agostino) be removed. 
At first the mayor was inclined to treat the deputa- 
tion with a light good humour, and to resume the 
study of his MS. But Agostino had a MS. of his 
own. This was a copy of a charter whereby, 
before mayors and councillors were, the right to 
that piece of land had been granted in perpetuity 
to the fisherfolk of the district. The mayor, 
not committing himself to any opinion of the 

validity of the document, said that he but 

there, it is tedious to report the speeches of mayors. 
Agostino told his mayor that a certain great 
lawyer would be arriving from Genoa to-morrow. 
It were tedious to report what passed between that 



38 AND EVEN NOW 

great lawyer and the mayor and councillors assem- 
bled. Suffice it that.the councillors were frightened, 
the date of the unveiling was postponed, and the 
whole matter, referred to high authorities in Rome, 
went darkly drifting into some form of litigation, 
and there abides. 

Technically, then, neither side may claim that 
is has won. The statue has not been unveiled. 
But the statue has not been displaced. Practically, 
though, and morally, the palm is, so far, to the 
fishermen. The pedestal does not really irk them 
at all. On the contrary, it and the sheeting do 
cast for them in the heat a pleasant shadow, of 
which (the influence of Fleet Street, once felt, never 
shaken off, forces me to say) they are not slow to 
avail themselves. And the cost of the litigation 
comes not, you may be sure, out of their light 
old pockets, but out of the coffers of some pious 
rich folk hereabouts. The Pope remains a prisoner 
in the Vatican.? Well, here is Umberto, a kind of 
hostage. Yet with what a difference ! Here is no 
spiritual king stripped of earthly kingship. Here is 
an earthly king kept swaddled up day after day, 
to be publicly ridiculous. The fishermen, as I 
have said, pay him no heed. The mayor, passing 
along the road, looks straight in front of him, with 
an elaborate assumption of unconcern. So do 
the councillors. But there are others who look 
maliciously up at the hapless figure. Now and 



MOBLED KING 39 

again there comes a monk from the monastery on 
that hill yonder. He laughs into his beard as he 
goes by. Two by two, in their grey cloaks and 
their blue mantillas, the little orphan girls are 
sometimes marched past. There they go, as I 
write. Not malice, but a vague horror, is in the 
eyes they turn. Umberto, belike, is used as a 
means to frighten them when, or lest, they offend. 
The nun in whose charge they are crosses herself. 
Yet it is recorded of Umberto that he was kind 
to little children. This, indeed, is one of the few 
things recorded of him. Fierce though he looked, 
he was, for the most part, it must be confessed, 
null. He seldom asserted himself. There was so 
little of that for him to assert. He had, there- 
fore, no personal enemies. In a negative way, he 
was popular, and was positively popular, for a while, 
after his assassination. And this it is that makes 
him now the less able, poor fellow, to understand 
and endure the shame he is put to. *Stat rex 
indignatus.' He does try to assert himself now — 
does strive, by day and by night, poor petrefact, 
to rip off these fell and clownish integuments. Of 
his elder brother in Paris he has never heard; 
but he knows that Lazarus arisen from the tomb 
did not live in grave-clothes. He forgets that 
after all he is only a statue. To himself he is still 
a king — or at least a man who was once a king and, 
having done no wrong, ought not now to be insulted. 



40 AND EVEN NOW 

If he had in his composition one marble grain of 
humour, he might . . . but no, a joke against 
oneself is always cryptic. Fat men are not always 
the best drivers of fat oxen; and cryptic statues 
cannot be depended on to see cryptic jokes. 

If Umberto could grasp the truth that no man 
is worthy to be reproduced as a statue; if he could 
understand, once and for all, that the unveiling of 
him were itself a notable disservice to him, then 
might his wrath be turned to acquiescence, and his 
acquiescence to gratitude, and he be quite happy 
hid. Is he, really, more ridiculous now than he 
always was.? If you be an extraordinary man, as 
was his father, win a throne by all means: you 
will fill it. If your son be another extraordinary 
man, he will fill it when his turn comes. But if 
that son be, as, alas, he most probably will be, like 
Umberto, quite ordinary, then let parental love 
triumph over pride of dynasty : advise your boy to 
abdicate at the earliest possible moment. A great 
king — what better .^^ But it is ill that a throne 
be sat on by one whose legs dangle uncertainly 
towards the dais, and ill that a crown settle down 
over the tip of the nose. And the very fact that 
for quite inadequate kings men's hands do leap to 
the salute, instinctively, does but make us, on re- 
flection, the more conscious of the whole absurdity. 
Even than a great man on a throne we can, when 
we reflect, imagine something — ah, not something 



MOBLED KING 41 

better perhaps, but something more remote from 
absurdity. Let us say that Umberto's father was 
great, as well as extraordinary. He was accounted 
great enough to be the incarnation of a great idea. 
'United Italy' — oh yes, a great idea, a charming 
idea: in the 'sixties I should have been all for it. 
But how shall I or any other impartial person write 
odes to the reality? What people in all this ex- 
quisite peninsula are to-day the happier for the 
things done by and through Vittorio Emmanuele 
Liberator .f^ 

The question is not merely rhetorical. There is 
the large class of politicians, who would have had 
no scope in the old days. And there are the many 
men who in other days would have been fishing 
or ploughing, but now strut in this and that official 
uniform. There passes between me and the sea, 
as I write — how opportunely people do pass here ! — 
a little man with a peaked cap and light blue 
breeches and a sword. His prime duty is to see 
that none of his fellow peasants shall carry home 
a bucket of sea-water. For there is salt in sea- 
water; and heavily, because they must have it or 
sicken, salt is taxed; and this passing sentinel is 
to prevent them from cheating the Revenue by 
recourse to the sea which, though here it is, they 
must not regard as theirs. What becomes of 
the tax-money? It goes towards the building 
of battleships, cruisers, gunboats and so forth. 



42 AND EVEN NOW 

What are these for? Why, for Italy to be a Great 
European Power with, of course. In the little 
blue bay behind Umberto, while I write, there 
lies at anchor an Italian gunboat. Opportunely 
again .f* I can but assure you that it really and 
truly is there. It has been there for two days. 
It delights the fishermen. They say it is 'bella e 
pulita com' un fiore,' They stand shading their 
eyes towards it, smiling and proud, heirs of all the 
ages, neglecting their sails and nets and spars of 
wood. They can imagine nothing better than it. 
They see nothing at all sinister or absurd about it, 
these simple fellows. And simple Umberto, their 
captive, strives to wheel round on his pedestal and 
to tear but a peep-hole in his sheeting. He would 
be glad could he feast but one eye on this bit of 
national glory. But he remains helpless — helpless 
as a Sultana made ready for the Bosphorus, helpless 
as a pig is in a poke. It enrages him that he who 
was so eminently respectable in life should be made 
so ludicrous on his eminence after death. He is 
bitter at the inertia of the men who set him up. 
Were he an ornament of the Church, not of the 
State that he served so conscientiously, how very 
different would be the treatment of his plight ! If 
he were a Saint, occluded thus by the municipality, 
how many the prayers that would be muttered, the 
candles promised, for his release ! There would be 
processions, too; and who knows but that there 



MOBLED KING 43 

might even be a miracle vouchsafed, a rending of 
the veil? The only procession that passes him is 
that of the intimidated orphans. No heavenly 
power intervenes for him — perhaps (he bitterly 
conjectures) for fear of offending the Vatican. 
Sirocco, now and again, blows furiously at his 
back, but never splits the sheeting. Rain often 
soaks it, never rots it. There is no help for him. 
He stands a mock to the pious, a shame and incu- 
bus to the emancipated; received, yet hushed up; 
exalted, yet made a fool of; taken and left; a 
monument to Fate's malice. 

From under the hem of his weather-beaten 
domino, always, he just displays, with a sort of 
■ tragic coquetry, the toe of a stout and serviceable 
marble boot. And this, I have begun to believe, 
*is all that I shall ever see of him. Else might I 
not be writing about him; for else had he not so 
haunted me. If I knew myself destined to see 
him — to see him steadily and see him whole — no 
matter how many years hence, I could forthwith 
think about other things. I had hoped that by 
this essay I might rid my mind of him. He is 
inexcutible, confound him! His pedestal draws 
me to itself with some such fascination as had the 
altar of the unknown god for the wondering Greek. 
I try to distract myself by thinking of other images 
— images that I have seen. I think of Bartolommeo 
Colleoni riding greatly forth under the shadow of 



44 AND EVEN NOW 

the church of Saint John and Saint Paul. Of Mr. 
Peabody I think, cosy in his armchair behind the 
Royal Exchange; of Nelson above the sparrows, 
and of Perseus among the pigeons; of golden 
Albert, and of Harvey the not red. Up looms 
Umberto, uncouthly casting them one and all into 
the shade. I think of other statues that I have 
not seen — statues suspected of holding something 
back from even the clearest-eyed men who have 
stood beholding and soliciting them. But how 
obvious, beside Umberto, the Sphinx would be! 
And Memnon, how tamely he sits waiting for the 
dawn ! 

Matchless as a memorial, then, I say again, this 
statue is. And as a work of art it has at least the 
advantage of being beyond criticism. In my young 
days, I wrote a plea that all the statues in the 
streets and squares of London should be extirpated 
and, according to their materials, smashed or 
melted. From an aesthetic standpoint, I went a 
trifle too far: London has a few good statues. 
From an humane standpoint, my plea was all 
wrong. Let no violence be done to the effigies of 
the dead. There is disrespect in setting up a dead 
man's effigy and then not unveiling it. But there 
would be no disrespect, and there would be no 
violence, if the bad statues familiar to London w ere 
ceremoniously veiled, and their inscribed pedestals 
left just as they are. That is a scheme which 



MOBLED KING 45 

occurred to me soon after I saw the veiled Umber to. 
Mr. Birrell has now stepped in and forestalled my 
advocacy. Pereant qui — but no, who could wish 
that charming man to perish? The realisation of 
that scheme is what matters. 

Let an inventory be taken of those statues. Let 
it be submitted to Lord Rosebery. Let him be 
asked to tick off all those statesmen, poets, phi- 
losophers and other personages about whom he 
would wish to orate. Then let the list be passed on 
to other orators, until every statue on it shall have 
its particular spokesman. Then let the dates for 
the various veilings be appointed. If there be four 
or five veilings every week, I conceive that the 
whole list will be exhausted in two years or so. 
And my enjoyment of the reported speeches will 
not be the less keen because I can so well imagine 
them. ... In conclusion, Lord Rosebery said that 
the keynote to the character of the man in whose 
honour they were gathered together to-day was, 
first and last, integrity. (Applause.) He did not 
say of him that he had been infallible. Which of 
us was infallible? (Laughter.) But this he would 
say, that the great man whose statue they were 
looking on for the last time had been actuated 
throughout his career by no motive but the desire 
to do that, and that only, which would conduce to 
the honour and to the stability of the country that 
gave him birth. Of him it might truly be said, as 



46 AND EVEN NOW 

had been said of another, 'That which he had to 
give, he gave.' (Loud and prolonged applause.) 
His Lordship then pulled the cord, and the sheeting 
rolled up into position. . . 

Not, however, because those speeches will so 
edify and soothe me, nor merely because those 
veiled statues will make less uncouth the city I 
was born in, do I feverishly thrust on you my 
proposition. The wish in me is that posterity shall 
be haunted by our dead heroes even as I am by 
Umberto. Rather hard on posterity? Well, the 
prevision of its plight would cheer me in mine 
immensely. 



KOLNIYATSCH 



KOLNIYATSCH 

1913- 

NONE of us who keep an eye on the heavens of 
European literature can forget the emotion 
that we felt when, but a few years since, 
the red star of Kolniyatsch swam into our ken. As 
nobody can prove that I wasn't, I claim now that 
I was the first to gauge the magnitude of this star 
and to predict the ascendant course which it has 
in fact triumphantly taken. That was in the 
days when Kolniyatsch was still alive. His recent 
death gives the cue for the boom. Out of that 
boom I, for one, will not be left. I rush to scrawl 
my name, large, on the tombstone of Kolniyatsch. 
These foreign fellows always are especially to be 
commended. By the mere mention of their names 
you evoke in reader or hearer a vague sense of your 
superiority and his. Thank heaven, we are no 
longer insular. I don't say we have no native 
talent. We have heaps of it, pyramids of it, all 
around. But where, for the genuine thrill, would 
England be but for her good fortune in being able 
to draw on a seemingly inexhaustible supply of 
anguished souls from the Continent — infantile, 

49 



50 AND EVEN NOW 

wide-eyed Slavs, Titan Teutons, greatly blighted 
Scandinavians, all of them different, but all of them 
raving in one common darkness and with one 
common gesture plucking out their vitals for 
exportation? There is no doubt that our con- 
tinuous receipt of this commodity has had a 
bracing effect on our national character. We used 
to be rather phlegmatic, used we not? We have 
learnt to be vibrant. 

Of Kolniyatsch, as of all authentic master-spirits 
in literature, it is true that he must be judged 
rather by what he wrote than by what he was. 
But the quality of his genius, albeit nothing if 
not national and also universal, is at the same 
time so deeply personal that we cannot afford to 
close our eyes on his life — a life happily not void 
of those sensational details which are what we all 
really care about. 

'If you have tears, prepare to shed them now." 
Kolniyatsch was born, last of a long line of rag- 
pickers, in 1886. At the age of nine he had already 
acquired that passionate alcoholism which was to 
have so great an influence in the moulding of his 
character and on the trend of his thought. Other- 
wise he does not seem to have shown in childhood 
any exceptional promise. It was not before his 
eighteenth birthday that he murdered his grand- 
mother and was sent to that asylum in which he 
wrote the poems and plays belonging to what we 



KOLNIYATSCH 51 

now call his earlier manner. In 1907 he escaped 
from his sanctum, or chuzketc (cell) as he sardonic- 
ally called it, and, having acquired some money 
by an act of violence, gave, by sailing for America, 
early proof that his genius was of the kind that 
crosses frontiers and seas. Unfortunately, it was 
not of the kind that passes Ellis Island. America, 
to her lasting shame, turned him back. Early 
in 1908 we find him once more in his old 
quarters, working at those novels and confessions 
on which, in the opinion of some, his fame will ulti- 
niately rest. Alas, we don't find him there now. It 
will be a fortnight ago to-morrow that Luntic 
Kolniyatsch passed peacefully away, in the twenty- 
eighth year of his age. He would have been the 
last to wish us to indulge in any sickly sentimen- 
tality. 'Nothing is here for tears, nothing but 
well and fair, and what may quiet us in a death so 
noble.' 

Was Kolniyatsch mad? It depends on what 
we mean by that word. If we mean, as the bureau- 
crats of Ellis Island and, to their lasting shame, his 
friends and relations presumably meant, that he 
did not share our own smug and timid philosophy 
of life, then indeed was Kolniyatsch not sane. 
Granting for sake of argument that he was mad in 
a wider sense than that, we do but oppose an 
insuperable stumbling-block to the Eugenists. 
Imagine what Europe would be to-day, had 



52 AND EVEN NOW 

Kolniyatsch not been! As one of the critics 
avers, 'It is hardly too much to say that a time 
may be not far distant, and may indeed be nearer 
than many of us suppose, when Luntic Kolniyatsch 
will, rightly or wrongly, be reckoned by some 
of us as not the least of those writers who are 
especially symptomatic of the early twentieth 
century and are possibly "for all time" or for a' 
more or less certainly not inconsiderable period of 
time.' That is finely said. But I myself go 
somewhat further. I say that Kolniyatsch' s mes- 
sage has drowned all previous messages and will 
drown any that may be uttered in the remotest 
future. You ask me what, precisely, that message 
was.f^ Well, it is too elemental, too near to the 
very heart of naked Nature, for exact definition. 
Can you describe the message of an angry python 
more satisfactorily than as S-s-s-sf Or that of 
an infuriated bull better than as Moof That of 
Kolniyatsch lies somewhere between these two. 
Indeed, at whatever point we take him, we find 
him hard to fit into any single category. Was 
he a realist or a romantic.'^ He was neither, 
and he was both. By more than one critic he 
has been called a pessimist, and it is true that a 
part of his achievement may be gauged by the 
lengths to which he carried pessimism — railing and 
raging, not, in the manner of his tame forerunners, 
merely at things in general, or at women, or at 



KOLNIYATSCH 53 

himself, but lavishing an equally fierce scorn and 
hatred on children, on trees and flowers and the 
moon, and indeed on everything that the senti- 
mentalists have endeavoured to force into favour. 
On the other hand, his burning faith in a per- 
sonal Devil, his frank delight in earthquakes and 
pestilences, and his belief that every one but 
himself will be brought back to life in time to 
be frozen to death in the next glacial epoch, 
seem rather to stamp him as an optimist. By 
birth and training a man of the people, he was 
yet an aristocrat to the finger-tips, and Byron 
would have called him brother, though one trembles 
to think what he would have called Byron. First 
and last, he was an artist, and it is by reason of his 
technical mastery that he most of all outstands. 
Whether in prose or in verse, he compasses a broken 
rhythm that is as the very rhythm of life itself, 
and a cadence that catches you by the throat, 
as a terrier catches a rat, and wrings from you the 
last drop of pity and awe. His skill in avoiding 
'the inevitable word' is simply miraculous. He 
is the despair of the translator. Far be it from me 
to belittle the devoted labours of Mr. and Mrs. 
Pegaway, whose monumental translation of the 
Master's complete works is now drawing to its 
splendid close. Their promised biography of the 
murdered grandmother is awaited eagerly by all 
who take — and which of us does not take? — a 



54 AND EVEN NOW 

breathless interest in Kolniyatschiana. But Mr. 
and Mrs. Pegaway would be the first to admit 
that their renderings of the prose and verse they 
love so well are a wretched substitute for the real 
thing. I wanted to get the job myself, but they 
nipped in and got it before me. Thank heaven, 
they cannot deprive me of the power to read 
Kolniyatsch in the original Gibrisch and to crow 
over you who can't. 

Of the man himself — ^for on several occasions 
I had the privilege and the permit to visit him — 
I have the pleasantest, most sacred memories. 
His was a wonderfully vivid and intense person- 
ality. The head was beautiful, perfectly conic in 
form. The eyes were like two revolving lamps, set 
very close together. The smile was haunting. 
There was a touch of old-world courtesy in the re- 
pression of the evident impulse to spring at one's 
throat. The voice had notes that recalled M. 
Mounet-Sully's in the later and more important 
passages of Oedipe Roi. I remember that he al- 
ways spoke with the greatest contempt of Mr. and 
Mrs. Pegaway's translations. He likened them to 

but enough ! His boom is not yet at the full. 

A few weeks hence I shall be able to command an 
even higher price than I could now for my * Talks 
with Kolniyatsch.' 



No. 2. THE PINES 



No. 2. THE PINES 

[Early in the year 1914 Mr. Edmund Gosse told me he was asking 
certain of his friends to write for him a few words apiece in descrip- 
tion of Swinburne as they had known or seen him at one time or 
another; and he was so good as to wish to include in this gathering 
a few words by myself. I found it hard to be brief without seeming 
irreverent. I failed in the attempt to make of my subject a snapshot 
that 2oas not a grotesque. So I took refuge in an ampler scope. I 
Tjorote a reminiscential essay. From that essay I made an extract, 
which I gave to Mr. Gosse. From that extract he made a quotation 
in his enchanting biography. The words quoted by him reappear 
here in the midst of the whole essay as I wrote it. I dare not hope 
they are unashamed of their humble surroundings. — M. 5.] 

IN my youth the suburbs were rather looked 
down on — I never quite knew why. It was 
held anomalous, and a matter for merri- 
ment, that Swinburne lived in one of them. For 
my part, had I known as a fact that Catullus was 
still alive, I should have been as ready to imagine 
him living in Putney as elsewhere. The marvel 
would have been merely that he lived. And 
Swinburne's survival struck as surely as could his 
have struck in me the chord of wonder. 

Not, of course, that he had achieved a feat of 

57 



58 AND EVEN NOW 

longevity. He was far from the Psalmist's limit. 
Nor was he one of those men whom one associates 
with the era in which they happened to be young. 
Indeed, if there was one man belonging less than 
any other to Mid- Victorian days, Swinburne was 
that man. But by the calendar it was in those 
days that he had blazed — blazed forth with so 
unexampled a suddenness of splendour; and in 
the light of that conflagration all that he had 
since done, much and magnificent though this was, 
paled. The essential Swinburne was still the 
earliest. He was and would always be the flammi- 
ferous boy of the dim past — a legendary creature, 
sole kin to the phoenix. It had been impossible 
that he should ever surpass himself in the artistry 
that was from the outset his; impossible that 
he should bring forth rhythms lovelier and greater 
than those early rhythms, or exercise over them 
a mastery more than — absolute. Also, it had been 
impossible that the first wild ardour of spirit 
should abide unsinkingly in him. Youth goes. 
And there was not in Swinburne that basis on 
which a man may in his maturity so build as to 
make good, in some degree, the loss of what is gone. 
He was not a thinker: his mind rose ever away 
from reason to rhapsody; neither was he human. 
He was a king crowned but not throned. He was 
a singing bird that could build no nest. He was a 
youth who could not afford to age. Had he died 



NO. 2. THE PINES 59 

^" 

young, literature would have lost many glories; 
but none so great as the glories he had already 
given, nor any such as we should fondly imagine 
ourselves bereft of by his early death. A great 
part of Keats' fame rests on our assumption of 
what he would have done. But — even gra;nting 
that Keats may have had in him more than had 
Swinburne of stuff for development — I believe that 
had he lived on we should think of him as author 
of the poems that in fact we know. Not philosophy, 
after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of 
song, is the primal thing in poetry. Ideas, and 
flesh and blood, are but reserves to be brought up 
when the poet's youth is going. When the bird 
can no longer sing in flight, let the nest be ready. 
After the king has dazzled us with his crown, 
let him have something to sit down on. But the 
session on throne or in nest is not the divine period. 
Had Swinburne's genius been of the kind that 
solidifies, he would yet at the close of the nineteenth 
century have been for us young men virtually — 
though not so definitely as in fact he was — the 
writer of *Atalanta in Calydon' and of 'Poems 
and Ballads.' 

Tennyson's death in '98 had not taken us at all 
by surprise. We had been fully aware that he was 
alive. He had always been careful to keep himself 
abreast of the times. Anything that came along — 
the Nebular Hypothesis at one moment, the 



60 AND EVEN NOW 

Imperial Institute at another — won mention from 
his Muse. He had husbanded for his old age that 
which he had long ago inherited: middle age. 
If in our mourning for him there really was any 
tincture of surprise, this was due to merely the 
vague sense that he had in the fullness of time died 
rather prematurely: his middle-age might have 
been expected to go on flourishing for ever. But 
assuredly Tennyson dead laid no such strain on 
our fancy as Swinburne living. 

It is true that Swinburne did, from time to time, 
take public notice of current affairs; but what 
notice he took did but seem to mark his remoteness 
from them, from us. The Boers, I remember, 
were the theme of a sonnet which embarrassed 
even their angriest enemies in our midst. He 
likened them, if I remember rightly, to * hell- 
hounds foaming at the jaws.' This was by some 
people taken as a sign that he had fallen away from 
that high generosity of spirit which had once 
been his. To me it meant merely that he thought 
of poor little England writhing under the heel of an 
alien despotism, just as, in the days when he really 
was interested in such matters, poor little Italy 
had writhen. I suspect, too, that the first impulse 
to write about the Boers came not from the Muse 
within, but from Theodore Watts-Dunton with- 
out. . . . *Now, Algernon, we're at war, you 
know — at war with the Boers. I don't want to 



NO. 2. THE PINES 61 

bother you at all, but I do think, my dear old 
friend, you oughtn't to let slip this opportunity 
of,' etc., etc. 

Some such hortation is easily imaginable by 
any one who saw the two old friends together. 
The first time I had this honour, this sight for 
lasting and affectionate memory, must have been 
in the Spring of '99. In those days Theodore 
Watts (he had but recently taken on the -Dunton) 
was still something of a gad-about. I had met him 
here and there, he had said in his stentorian tones 
pleasant things to me about my writing, I sent him 
a new little book of mine, and in acknowledging this 
he asked me to come down to Putney and 'have 
luncheon and meet Swinburne.' Meet Catullus! 

On the day appointed ' I came as one whose feet 
half linger.' It is but a few steps from the railway- 
station in Putney High Street to No. 2. The Pines. 
I had expected a greater distance to the sanctuary 
— a walk in which to compose my mind and prepare 
myself for initiation. I laid my hand irresolutely 
against the gate of the bleak trim front-garden, 
I withdrew my hand, I went away. Out here were 
all the aspects of common modern life. In there 
was Swinburne. A butcher-boy went by, whistling. 
He was not going to see Swinburne. He could 
afford to whistle. I pursued my dilatory course up 
the slope of Putney, but at length it occurred to me 
that unpunctuality would after all be an imperfect 



62 AND EVEN NOW 

expression of reverence, and I retraced my foot- 
steps. 

No. 2 — prosaic inscription! But as that front- 
door closed behind me I had the instant sense of 
having slipped away from the harsh light of the 
ordinary and contemporary into the dimness of 
an odd, august past. Here, in this dark hall, the 
past was the present. Here loomed vivid and vital 
on the walls those women of Rossetti whom I had 
known but as shades. Familiar to me in small 
reproductions by photogravure, here they them- 
selves were, life-sized, *with curled-up lips and 
amorous hair' done in the original warm crayon, 
all of them intently looking down on me while I 
took off my overcoat — all wondering who was this 
intruder from posterity. That they hung in the 
hall, evidently no more than an overflow, was an 
earnest of packed plenitude within. The room I 
was ushered into was a back-room, a dining-room, 
looking on to a good garden. It was, in form 
and 'fixtures,' an inalienably Mid- Victorian room, 
and held its stolid own in the riot of Rossettis. 
Its proportions, its window-sash bisecting the view 
of garden, its folding-doors (through which I heard 
the voice of Watts-Dunton booming mysteriously 
in the front room), its mantel-piece, its gas-brack- 
ets, all proclaimed that nothing ever would seduce 
them from their allegiance to Martin Tupper. 'Nor 
me from mine,' said the sturdy cruet-stand on the 



NO. 2. THE PINES 63 

long expanse of table-cloth. The voice of Watts- 
Dunton ceased suddenly, and a few moments later 
its owner appeared. He had been dictating, he 
explained. /A great deal of work on hand just 
now — a great deal of work.' ... I remember that 
on my subsequent visits he was always, at the 
moment of my arrival, dictating, and always 
greeted me with that phrase, *A great deal of 
work on hand just now.' I used to wonder what 
work it was, for he published little enough. But 
I never ventured to inquire, and indeed rather 
cherished the mystery: it was a part of the dear 
little old man; it went with the something gnome- 
like about his swarthiness and chubbiness — went 
with the shaggy hair that fell over the collar of his 
eternally crumpled frock-coat, the shaggy eye- 
brows that overhung his bright little brown eyes, 
the shaggy moustache that hid his small roimd 
chin. It was a mystery inherent in the richly- 
laden atmosphere of The Pines. . . . 

While I stood talking to Watts-Dunton — talking 
as loudly as he, for he was very deaf — I enjoyed the 
thrill of suspense in watching the door through 
which would appear — Swinburne. I asked after 
Mr. Swinburne's health. Watts-Dunton said it 
was very good: *He always goes out for his long 
walk in the morning — wonderfully active. Active 
in mind, too. But I'm afraid you won't be able 
to get into touch with him. He's almost stone- 



64 AND EVEN NOW 

deaf, poor fellow — almost stone-deaf now.' He 
changed the subject, and I felt I must be careful 
not to seem interested in Swinburne exclusively. 
I spoke of 'Aylwin.' The parlourmaid brought 
in the hot dishes. The great moment was at hand. 
Nor was I disappointed. Swinburne's entry was 
for me a great moment. Here, suddenly visible 
in the flesh, was the legendary being and divine 
singer. Here he was, shutting the door behind him 
as might anybody else, and advancing — a strange 
small figure in grey, having an air at once noble 
and roguish, proud and skittish. My name was 
roared to him. In shaking his hand, I bowed low, 
of course — a bow de cosur; and he, in the old 
aristocratic manner, bowed equally low, but with 
such swiftness that we narrowly escaped concus- 
sion. You do not usually associate a man of 
genius, when you see one, with any social class; 
and, Swinburne being of an aspect so unrelated as 
it was to any species of human kind, I wondered 
the more that almost the first impression he made 
on me, or would make on any one, was that of a 
very great gentleman indeed. Not of an old 
gentleman, either. Sparse and straggling though 
the grey hair was that fringed the immense pale 
dome of his head, and venerably haloed though he 
was for me by his greatness, there was yet about 
him something — boyish.'^ girlish? childish, rather; 
something of a beautifully well-bred child. But he 



NO. 2. THE PINES 65 

had the eyes of a god, and the smile of an elf. In 
figure, at first glance, he seemed almost fat; but 
this was merely because of the way he carried him- 
self, with his long neck strained so tightly back 
that he all receded from the waist upwards. I 
noticed afterwards that this deportment made the 
back of his jacket hang quite far away from his 
legs; and so small and sloping were his shoulders 
that the jacket seemed ever so likely to slip right 
off. I became aware, too, that when he bowed he 
did not unbend his back, but only his neck — the 
length of the neck accounting for the depth of the 
bow. His hands were tiny, even for his size, and 
they fluttered helplessly, touchingly, unceasingly. 
Directly after my introduction, we sat down to 
the meal. Of course I had never hoped to *get 
into touch with him' reciprocally. Quite apart 
from his deafness, I was too modest to suppose he 
could be interested in anything I might say. But 
— for I knew he had once been as high and copious 
a singer in talk as in verse — I had hoped to hear 
utterances from him. And it did not seem that my 
hope was to be fulfilled. Watts-Dunton sat at the 
head of the table, with a huge and very Tupper- 
esque joint of roast mutton in front of him, Swin- 
burne and myself close up to him on either side. 
He talked only to me. This was the more tantalis- 
ing because Swinburne seemed as though he were 
bubbling over with all sorts of notions. Not that 



66 AND EVEN NOW 

he looked at either of us. He smiled only to him- 
self, and to his plateful of meat, and to the small 
bottle of Bass's pale ale that stood before him — 
ultimate allowance of one who had erst clashed 
cymbals in Naxos. This small bottle he eyed often 
and with enthusiasm, seeming to waver between 
the rapture of broaching it now and the grandeur 
of having it to look forward to. It made me un- 
happy to see what trouble he had in managing his 
knife and fork. Watts-Dunton told me on another 
occasion that this infirmity of the hands had been 
lifelong — had begun before Eton days. The Swin- 
burne family had been alarmed by it and had 
consulted a specialist, who said that it resulted from 
'an excess of electric vitality,' and that any at- 
tempt to stop it would be harmful. So they had 
let it be. I have known no man of genius who had 
not to pay, in some affliction or defect either 
physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given 
him. Here, in this fluttering of his tiny hands, 
was a part of the price that Swinburne had to pay. 
No doubt he had grown accustomed to it many 
lustres before I met him, and I need not have felt 
at all unhappy at what I tried not to see. He, 
evidently, was quite gay, in his silence — and in the 
world that was for him silent. I had, however, 
the maddening suspicion that he would have liked 
to talk. Why wouldn't Watts-Dunton roar him an 
opportunity? I felt I had been right perhaps in 



NO. 2. THE PINES 67 

feeling that the lesser man was — no, not jealous 
of the greater whom he had guarded so long and 
with such love, but anxious that he himself should 
be as fully impressive to visitors as his fine gifts 
warranted. Not, indeed, that he monopolised the 
talk. He seemed to regard me as a source of 
information about all the latest * movements,' 
and I had to shout banalities while he munched his 
mutton — banalities whose one saving grace for me 
was that they were inaudible to Swinburne. Had 
I met Swinburne's gaze, I should have faltered. 
Now and again his shining light-grey eyes roved 
from the table, darting this way and that — across 
the room, up at the ceiling, out of the window; 
only never at us. Somehow this aloofness gave no 
hint of indifference. It seemed to be, rather, a 
point in good manners — the good manners of a 
child 'sitting up to table,' not * staring,' not 
'asking questions,' and reflecting great credit on 
its invaluable old nurse. The child sat happy in 
the wealth of its inner life; the child was content 
not to speak until it were spoken to; but, but, 
I felt it did want to be spoken to. And, at length, 
it was, I 

So soon as tne mutton had been replaced by tne 
apple-pie, Watts-Dunton leaned forward and * Well, 
Algernon,' he roared, *how was it on the Heath 
to-day .f^' Swinburne, who had meekly inclined 
his ear to the question, now threw back his head. 



68 AND EVEN NOW 

uttering a sound that was like the cooing of a dove, 
and forthwith, rapidly, ever so musically, he spoke 
to us of his walk; spoke not in the strain of a man 
who had been taking his daily exercise on Putney 
Heath, but rather in that of a Peri who had at long 
last been suJBFered to pass through Paradise. And 
rather than that he spoke would I say that he 
cooingly and flutingly sang of his experience. 
The wonders of this morning's wind and sun and 
clouds were expressed in a flow of words so right 
and sentences so perfectly balanced that they 
would have seemed pedantic had they not been 
clearly as spontaneous as the wordless notes of a 
bird in song. The frail, sweet voice rose and fell, 
lingered, quickened, in all manner of trills and rou- 
lades. That he himself could not hear it, seemed to 
me the greatest loss his deafness inflicted on him. 
One would have expected this disability to mar the 
music; but it didn't; save that now and again 
a note would come out metallic and over-shrill, 
the tones were under good control. The whole 
manner and method had certainly a strong element 
of oddness; but no one incapable of condemning 
as unmanly the song of a lark would have called it 
affected. I had met young men of whose enuncia- 
tion Swinburne's now reminded me. In them the 
thing had always irritated me very much; and I 
now became sure that it had been derived from 
people who had derived it in old Balliol days from 



NO. 2. THE PINES 69 

Swinburne himself. One of the points famihar to 
me in such enunciation was the habit of stressing 
extremely, and lackadaisically dwelling on, some 
particular syllable. In Swinburne this trick was 
delightful — because it wasn't a trick, but a need of 
his heart. Well do I remember his ecstasy of 
emphasis and immensity of pause when he de- 
scribed how he had seen in a perambulator on the 

Heath to-day ' the most beaut if ul babbie ever 

beheld by mortal eyes.' For babies, as some of his 
later volumes testify, he had a sort of idolatry. 
After Mazzini had followed Landor to Elysium, 
and Victor Hugo had followed Mazzini, babies 
were what among live creatures most evoked 
Swinburne's genius for self-abasement. His rap- 
ture about this especial * babbie' was such as to 
shake within me my hitherto firm conviction that, 
whereas the young of the brute creation are already 
beautiful at the age of five minutes, the human 
young never begin to be so before the age of three 
years. I suspect Watts-Dunton of having shared 
my lack of innate enthusiasm. But it was one of 
Swinburne's charms, as I was to find, that he took 
for granted every one's delight in what he himself 
so fervidly delighted in. He could as soon have 
imagined a man not loving the very sea as not 
doting on the aspect of babies and not reading at 
least one play by an Elizabethan or Jacobean 
dramatist every day. 



70 AND EVEN NOW 

I forget whether it was at this my first meal or 
at another that he described a storm in which, 
one night years ago, with Watts-Dunton, he had 
crossed the Channel. The rhythm of his great 
phrases was as the rhythm of those waves, and his 
head swayed in accordance to it like the wave- 
rocked boat itself. He hymned in memory the 
surge and darkness, the thunder and foam and 
phosphoresence — *You remember, Theodore? 

You remember the phos phorescence.? ' — all so 

beautifully and vividly that I almost felt storm- 
bound and in peril of my life. To disentangle one 
from another of the several occasions on which 
I heard him talk is difficult because the procedure 
was so invariable : Watts-Dunton always dictating 
when I arrived, Swinburne always appearing at the 
moment of the meal, always the same simple and 
substantial fare, Swinburne never allowed to talk 
before the meal was half over. As to this last 
point, I soon realised that I had been quite unjust 
in suspecting Watts-Dunton of selfishness. It was 
simply a sign of the care with which he watched 
over his friend's welfare. Had Swinburne been 
admitted earlier to the talk, he would not have 
taken his proper quantity of roast mutton. So 
soon, always, as he had taken that, the embargo 
was removed, the chance was given him. And, 
swiftly though he embraced the chance, and much 
though he made of it in the courses of apple-pie 



NO. 2. THE PINES 71 

and of cheese, he seemed touchingly ashamed of 
* holding forth.' Often, before he had said his 
really full say on the theme suggested by Watts- 
Dunton's loud interrogation, he would curb his 
speech and try to eliminate himself, bowing his 
head over his plate; and then, when he had 
promptly been brought in again, he would always 
try to atone for his inhibiting deafness by much 
reference and deference to all that we might other- 
wise have to say. 'I hope,' he would coo to me, 
*my friend Watts-Dun ton, who' — and here he 
would turn and make a little bow to Watts-Dunton 
— 'is himself a scholar, will bear me out when I 
say' — or 'I hardly know,' he would flute to his 
old friend, * whether Mr. Beerbohm' — here a bow 
to me — 'will agree with me in my opinion of 
some delicate point in Greek prosody or some 
incident in an old French romance I had never 
heard of. 

On one occasion, just before the removal of the 
mutton, Watts-Dunton had been asking me about 
an English translation that had been made of 
M. Rostand's ' Cyrano de Bergerac' He then took 
my information as the match to ignite the Swin- 
burnian tinder. *Well, Algernon, it seems that 
"Cyrano de Bergerac" ' — but this first spark was 
enough: instantly Swinburne was praising the 
works of Cyrano de Bergerac. Of M. Rostand he 
may have heard, but him he forgot. Indeed I never 



72 AND EVEN NOW 

heard Swinburne mention a single contemporary 
writer. His mind ranged and revelled always in 
the illustrious or obscure past. To him the writings 
of Cyrano de Bergerac were as fresh as paint — as 
fresh as to me, alas, was the news of their survival. 
'Of course, of course, you have read "L'Histoire 
Comique des fitats et des Empires de la Lune".f^' 
I admitted, by gesture and facial expression, that I 
had not. Whereupon he reeled out curious extracts 
from that allegory — * almost as good as " Gulliver 
— with a memorable instance of the way in which 
the traveller to the moon was shocked by the 
conversation of the natives, and the natives' sense 
of propriety was outraged by the conversation of 
the traveller. 

In life, as in (that for him more truly actual thing) 
literature, it was always the preterit that en- 
thralled him. Of any passing events, of anything 
the newspapers were full of, never a word from him; 
and I should have been sorry if there had been. 
But I did, through the medium of Watts-Dunton, 
sometimes start him on topics that might have led 
him to talk of Rossetti and other old comrades. 
For me the names of those men breathed the magic 
of the past, just as it was breathed for me by Swin- 
burne's presence. For him, I suppose, they were 
but a bit of the present, and the mere fact that they 
had dropped out of it was not enough to hallow 
them. He never mentioned them. But I was 



NO. 2. THE PINES 73 

glad to see that he revelled as wistfully in the days 
just before his own as I in the days just before mine. 
He recounted to us things he had been told in his 
boyhood by an aged aunt, or great-aunt — 'one of 
the Ashburnhams ' ; how, for example, she had 
been taken by her mother to a county ball, a 
distance of many miles, and, on the way home 
through the frosty and snowy night, the family- 
coach had suddenly stopped: there was a crowd 
of dark figures in the way ... at which point 
Swinburne stopped too, before saying, with an 
ineffable smile and in a voice faint with apprecia- 
tion, 'They were burying a suicide at the cross- 
roads.' 

Vivid as this Hogarthian night-scene was to me, 
I saw beside it another scene: a great panelled 
room, a grim old woman in a high-backed chair, 
and, restless on a stool at her feet an extraordinary 
little nephew with masses of auburn hair and with 
tiny hands clasped in supplication — ' Tell me more^ 
Aunt Ashburnham, tell me more ! ' 

And now, clearlier still, as I write in these after- 
years, do I see that dining-room of The Pines; 
the long white stretch of table-cloth, with Swin- 
burne and Watts-Dunton and another at the 
extreme end of it; Watts-Dunton between us, 
very low down over his plate, very cosy and hirsute, 
and rather like the dormouse at that long tea- 
table which Alice found in Wonderland. I see 



74 AND EVEN NOW 

myself sitting there wide-eyed, as Alice sat. And, 
had the hare been a great poet, and the hatter a 
great gentleman, and neither of them mad but 
each only very odd and vivacious, I might see 
Swinburne as a glorified blend of those two. 

When the meal ended — for, alas! it was not 
like that meal in Wonderland, unending — Swin- 
burne would dart round the table, proffer his hand 
to me, bow deeply, bow to Watts-Dun ton also, and 
disappear. 'He always walks in the morning, 
writes in the afternoon, and reads in the evening,' 
Watts-Dunton would say with a touch of tutorial 
pride in this regimen. 

That parting bow of Swinburne to his old friend 
was characteristic of his whole relation to him. 
Cronies though they were, these two, knit together 
with bonds innumerable, the greater man was 
always aux petits soins for the lesser, treating him 
as a newly-arrived young guest might treat an 
elderly host. Some twenty years had passed since 
that night when, ailing and broken — thought to be 
nearly dying, Watts-Dunton told me — Swinburne 
was brought in a four-wheeler to The Pines. Regu- 
lar private nursing-homes either did not exist in 
those days or were less in vogue than they are now. 
The Pines was to be a sort of private nursing-home 
for Swinburne. It was a good one. He recovered. 
He was most grateful to his friend and saviour. He 
made as though to depart, was persuaded to stay 



NO. 2. THE PINES 75 

a little longer, and then a little longei* than that. 
But I rather fancy that, to the last, he never did, 
in the fullness of his modesty and good manners, 
consent to regard his presence as a matter of course, 
or as anything but a terminable intrusion and 
obligation. His bow seemed always to convey 
that. 

Swinburne having gone from the room, in would 
come the parlourmaid. The table was cleared, 
the fire was stirred, two leather arm-chairs were 
pushed up to the hearth. Watts-Dun ton wanted 
gossip of the present. I wanted gossip of the great 
past. We settled down for a long, comfortable 
afternoon together. 

Only once was the ritual varied. Swinburne 
(I was told before luncheon) had expressed a wish 
to show me his library. So after the meal he did 
not bid us his usual adieu, but with much courtesy 
invited us and led the way. Up the staircase he 
then literally bounded — three, literally three, stairs 
at a time. I began to follow at the same rate, but 
immediately slackened speed for fear that Watts- 
Dunton behind us might be embittered at sight 
of so much youth and legerity. Swinburne waited 
on the threshold to receive us, as it were, and pass 
us in. Watts-Dun ton went and ensconced himself 
snugly in a corner. The sun had appeared after a 
grey morning, and it pleasantly flooded this big 
living-room whose walls were entirely lined with 



76 AND EVEN NOW 

the mellow backs of books. Here, as host, among 
his treasures, Swinburne was more than ever 
attractive. He was as happy as was any mote 
in the sunshine about him; and the fluttering of 
his little hands, and feet too, was but as a token of 
so much felicity. He looked older, it is true, in 
the strong light. But these added years made only 
more notable his youngness of heart. An illustrious 
bibliophile among his books? A birthday child, 
rather, among his toys. 

Proudly he explained to me the general system 
under which the volumes were ranged in this or 
that division of shelves. Then he conducted me to 
a chair near the window, left me there, flew away, 
flew up the rungs of a mahogany ladder, plucked 
a small volume, and in a twinkling was at my side: 
' This, I think, will please you ! ' It did. It had 
a beautifully engraved title-page and a pleasing 
scent of old, old leather. It was editio princeps of 
a play by some lesser Elizabethan or Jacobean. 
* Of course you know it.^^ ' my host fluted. 

How I wished I could say that I knew it and 
loved it well! I revealed to him (for by speaking 
very loudly towards his inclined head I was able to 
make him hear) that I had not read it. He envied 
any one who had such pleasure in store. He 
darted to the ladder, and came back thrusting 
gently into my hands another volume of like date: 
'Of course you know this?' 



NO. 2. THE PINES 77 

Again I had to confess that I did not, and to 
shout my appreciation of the fount of type, the 
margins, the binding. He beamed agreement, and 
fetched another volume. Archly he indicated 
the title, cooing, 'You are a lover of this, I 
hope.^' And again I was shamed by my inex- 
perience. 

I did not pretend to know this particular play, 
but my tone implied that I had always been 
meaning to read it and had always by some mis- 
chance been prevented. For his sake as well as 
my own I did want to acquit myself passably. 
I wanted for him the pleasure of seeing his joys 
shared by a representative, however humble, of the 
common world. I turned the leaves caressingly, 
looking from them to him, while he dilated on the 
beauty of this and that scene in the play. Anon he 
fetched another volume, and another, always with 
the same faith that this was a favourite of mine. 
I quibbled, I evaded, I was very enthusiastic and 
uncomfortable. It was with intense relief that I 
beheld the title-page of yet another volume which 
silently, this time) he laid before me — The 
Country Wench. * This of course I have read,' 
I heartily shouted. 

Swinburne stepped back. *You have? You 
have read it.^^ Where .^' he cried, in evident dis- 
may. 

Something was wrong. Had I not, I quickly 



78 AND EVEN NOW 

wondered, read this play? *0h yes,' I shouted, 
*I have read it.' 

'But when? Where?' entreated Swinburne, 
adding that he had supposed it to be the sole copy 
extant. 

I floundered. I wildly said I thought I must 
have read it years ago in the Bodleian. 

* Theodore! Do you hear this? It seems that 
they have now a copy of "The Country Wench" 
in the Bodleian! Mr. Beerbohm found one there 
— oh when? in what year?' he appealed to me. 

I said it might have been six, seven, eight years 
ago. Swinburne knew for certain that no copy 
had been there twelve years ago, and was surprised 
that he had not heard of the acquisition. *They 
might have told me,' he wailed. 

I sacrificed myself on the altar of sympathy. I 
admitted that I might have been mistaken — must 
have been — must have confused this play with 
some other. I dipped into the pages and 'No,' 
I shouted, *this I have never read.' 

His equanimity was restored. He was up the 
ladder and down again, showing me further treas- 
ures with all pride and ardour. At length, Watts- 
Dunton, afraid that his old friend would tire him- 
self, arose from his corner, and presently he and I 
went downstairs to the dining-room. It was in the 
course of our session together that there suddenly 
flashed across my mind the existence of a play 



NO. 2. THE PINES 79 

called 'The Country Wife,' by — wasn't it Wycher- 
ley? I had once read it — or read something about 
it. . . . But this matter I kept to myself. I 
thought I had appeared fool enough already. 

I loved those sessions in that Tupperossettine 
dining-room, lair of solid old comfort and fervid old 
romanticism. Its odd duality befitted well its 
owner. The distinguished critic and poet, Ros- 
setti's closest friend and Swinburne's, had been, for 
a while, in the dark ages, a solicitor; and one felt he 
had been a good one. His frock-coat, though the 
Muses had crumpled it, inspired confidence in his 
judgment of other things than verse. But let there 
be no mistake. He was no mere bourgeois parnas- 
sien, as his enemies insinuated. No doubt he had 
been very useful to men of genius, in virtue of 
qualities they lacked, but the secret of his hold 
on them was in his own rich nature. He was not 
only a born man of letters, he was a deeply emo- 
tional human being whose appeal was as much to 
the heart as to the head. The romantic Celtic 
mysticism of ' Aylwin,' with its lack of fashionable 
Celtic nebulosity, lends itself, if you will, to laugh- 
ter, though personally I saw nothing funny in it: 
it seemed to me, before I was in touch with the 
author, a work of genuine expression from within; 
and that it truly was so I presently knew. The 
mysticism of Watts-Dunton (who, once comfort- 
ably settled at the fireside, knew no reserve) was in 



80 AND EVEN NOW 

contrast with the frock-coat and the practical 
abihties; but it was essential, and they were of the 
surface. For humorous Rossetti, I daresay, the 
very contrast made Theodore's company the more 
precious. He himself had assuredly been, and the 
memory of him still was, the master-fact in Watts- 
Dunton's life. 'Algernon' was as an adopted 
child, ' Gabriel ' as a long-lost only brother. As he 
was to the outer world of his own day, so too to 
posterity Rossetti, the man, is conjectural and 
mysterious. We know that he was in his prime 
the most inspiring and splendid of companions. 
But we know this only by faith. The evidence is 
as vague as it is emphatic. Of the style and 
substance of not a few great talkers in the past 
we can piece together some more or less vivid and 
probably erroneous notion. But about Rossetti 
nothing has been recorded in such a way as to make 
him even faintly emerge. I suppose he had in 
him what reviewers seem to find so often in books : 
a quality that defies analysis. Listening to Watts- 
Dunton, I was alw^ays in hope that when next the 
long-lost turned up — for he was continually doing 
so — in the talk, I should see him, hear him, and 
share the rapture. But the revelation was not to be. 
You might think that to hear him called ' Gabriel ' 
would have given me a sense of propinquity. 
But I felt no nearer to him than you feel to the 
Archangel who bears the name and no surname. 



NO. 2. THE PINES 81 

It was always when Watts-Dimton spoke care- 
lessly, casually, of some to me illustrious figure in 
the past, that I had the sense of being wafted 
right into that past and plumped down in the very 
midst of it. When he spoke with reverence of 
this and that great man whom he had known, he 
did not thus waft and plump me; for I, too, revered 
those names. But I had the magical transition 
whenever one of the immortals was mentioned 
in the tone of those who knew him before he had 
put on immortality. Browning, for example, was a 
name deeply honoured by me. 'Browning, yes,' 
said Watts-Dunton, in the course of an afternoon, 
'Browning,' and he took a sip of the steaming 
whisky-toddy that was a point in our day's ritual. 
*I was a great diner-out in the old times. I used 
to dine out every night in the week. Browning was 
a great diner-out, too. We were always meeting. 
What a pity he went on writing all those plays! 
He hadn't any gift for drama — none. I never could 
understand why he took to play- writing.' He 
wagged his head, gazing regretfully into the fire, 
and added, *Such a clever fellow, too!' 

Whistler, though alive and about, was already 
looked to as a hierarch by the young. Not so had 
he been looked to by Rossetti. The thrill of the 
past was always strong in me when Watts-Dunton 
mentioned — seldom without a guffaw did he 
mention — * Jimmy Whistler.' I think he put in 



82 AND EVEN NOW 

the surname because * that fellow ' had not behaved 
well to Swinburne. But he could not omit the 
nickname, because it was impossible for him to 
feel the right measure of resentment against 'such 
a funny fellow.' As heart-full of old hates as of 
old loves was Watts-Dunton, and I take it as high 
testimony to the charm of Whistler's quaintness 
that Watts-Dunton did not hate him. You may be 
aware that Swinburne, in '88, wrote for one of the 
monthly reviews a criticism of the 'Ten O' Clock' 
lecture. He paid courtly compliments to Whistler 
as a painter, but joined issue with his theories. 
Straightway there appeared in the World a little 
letter from Whistler, deriding 'one Algernon 
Swinburne — outsider — Putney.' It was not in it- 
self a very pretty or amusing letter; and still less 
so did it seem in the light of the facts which Watts- 
Dunton told me in some such words as these: 
'After he'd published that lecture of his, Jimmy 
Whistler had me to dine with him at Kettner's or 
somewhere. He said "Now, Theodore, I want 
you to do me a favour." He wanted to get me to 
get Swinburne to write an article about his lecture. 
I said "No, Jimmy Whistler, I can't ask Algernon 
to do that. He's got a great deal of work on 
hand just now — a great deal of work. And be- 
sides, this sort of thing wouldn't be at'^all in his 
line.' But Jimmy Whistler went on appealing to 
me. He said it would do him no end of good if 



NO. 2. THE PINES 83 

Swinburne wrote about him. And — well, I half 
gave in : I said perhaps I would mention the matter 
to Algernon. And next day I did. I could see 
Algernon didn't want to do it at all. But — well, 
there, he said he'd do it to please me. And he did 
it. And then Jimmy Whistler published that 
letter. A very shabby trick — very shabby indeed.' 
Of course I do not vouch for the exact words in 
which Watts-Dun ton told me this tale; but this 
was exactly the tale he told me. I expressed my 
astonishment. He added that of course he * never 
wanted to see the fellow again after that, and never 
did.' But presently, after a long gaze into the 
coals, he emitted a chuckle, as for earlier memories 
of ' such a funny fellow.' One quite recent memory 
he had, too. ' When I took on the name of Dunton, 
I had a note from him. Just this, with his butterfly 
signature: Theodore! Whafs Dunton? That was 
very good — very good. . . . But, of course,' he 
added gravely, *I took no notice.' And no doubt, 
quite apart from the difl&culty of finding an answer 
in the same vein, he did well in not replying. 
Loyalty to Swinburne forbade. But I see a certain 
pathos in the unanswered message. It was a 
message from the hand of an old jester, but also, 
I think, from the heart of an old man — a signal 
waved jauntily, but in truth wistfully, across the 
gulf of years and estrangement; and one could 
wish it had not been ignored. 



84 AND EVEN NOW 

Some time after Whistler died I wrote for one of 
the magazines an appreciation of his curious skill 
in the art of writing. Watts-Dunton told me he 
had heard of this from Swinburne. 'I myself,' 
he said, *very seldom read the magazines. But 
Algernon always has a look at them.' There was 
something to me very droll, and cheery too, in 
this picture of the illustrious recluse snatching at 
the current issues of our twaddle. And I was 
immensely pleased at hearing that my article had 
* interested him very much.' I inwardly promised 
myself that as soon as I reached home I would read 
the article, to see just how it might have struck 
Swinburne. When in due course I did this, I 
regretted the tone of the opening sentences, in 
which I declared myself 'no book-lover' and 
avowed a preference for 'an uninterrupted view 
of my fellow-creatures.' I felt that had I known 
my article would meet the eye of Swinburne I 
should have cut out that overture. I dimly 
remembered a fine passage in one of his books of 
criticism — something (I preferred not to verify it) 
about 'the dotage of duncedom which cannot 
perceive, or the impudence of insignificance so 
presumptuous as to doubt, that the elements of 
life and literature are indivisibly mingled one in 
another, and that he to whom books are less real 
than life will assuredly find in men and women 
as little reality as in his accursed crassness he 



NO. 2. THE PINES 85 

deserves to discover.' I quailed, I quailed. But 
mine is a resilient nature, and I promptly reminded 
myself that Swinburne's was a very impersonal 
one: he would not think the less highly of me, for 
he never had thought about me in any way whatso- 
ever. All was well. I knew I could revisit The 
Pines, when next Watts-Dunton should invite me, 
without misgiving. And to this day I am rather 
proud of having been mentioned, though not by 
name, and not consciously, and unfavourably, by 
Swinburne. ~ 

I wonder that I cannot recall more than I do 
recall of those hours at The Pines. It is odd how 
little remains to a man of his own past — how few 
minutes of even his memorable hours are not 
clean forgotten, and how few seconds in any 
one of those minutes can be recaptured. . . I 
am middle-aged, and have lived a vast number 
of seconds. Subtract J of these, for one mustn't 
count sleep as life. The residual number is still 
enormous. Not a single one of those seconds was 
unimportant to me in its passage. Many of them 
bored me, of course; but even boredom is a positive 
state: one chafes at it and hates it; strange that 
one should afterwards forget it ! And stranger still 
that of one's actual happinesses and unhappinesses 
so tiny and tattered a remnant clings about one! 
Of those hours at The Pines, of that past within a 
past, there was not a minute nor a second that I did 



86 AND EVEN NOW 

not spend with pleasure. Memory is a great artist, 
we are told; she selects and rejects and shapes 
and so on. No doubt. Elderly persons would be 
utterly intolerable if they remembered everything. 
Everything, nevertheless, is just what they them- 
selves would like to remember, and just what they 
would like to tell to everybody. Be sure that the 
Ancient Mariner, though he remembered quite as 
much as his audience wanted to hear, and rather 
more, about the albatross and the ghastly crew, 
was inwardly raging at the sketchiness of his own 
mind; and believe me that his stopping only one 
of three was the merest oversight. I should like 
to impose on the world many tomes about The 
Pines. 

But, scant though my memories are of the 
moments there, very full and warm in me is the 
whole fused memory of the two dear old men that 
lived there. I wish I had Watts-Dunton's sure 
faith in meetings beyond the grave. I am glad I 
do not disbelieve that people may so meet. I like 
to think that some day in Elysium I shall — not 
without diffidence — approach those two and re- 
introduce myself. I can see just how courteously 
Swinburne will bow over my hand, not at all 
remembering who I am. Watts-Dun ton will re- 
member me after a moment: 'Oh, to be sure, 
yes indeed ! I've a great deal of work on hand just 
now — a great deal of work, but ' we shall sit down 



NO. 2. THE PINES 87 

together on the asphodel, and I cannot but think 
we shall have whisky-toddy even there. He will 
not have changed. He will still be shaggy and old 
and chubby, and will wear the same frock-coat, 
with the same creases in it. Swinburne, on the 
other hand, will be quite, quite young, with a full 
mane of flaming auburn locks, and no clothes to 
hinder him from plunging back at any moment 
into the shining Elysian waters from which he will 
have just emerged. I see him skim lightly away 
into that element. On the strand is sitting a man 
of noble and furrowed brow. It is Mazzini, still 
thinking of Liberty. And anon the tiny young 
English amphibian comes ashore to fling himself 
dripping at the feet of the patriot and to carol the 
Republican ode he has composed in the course of 
his swim. 'He's wonderfully active — active in 
mind and body,' Watts-Dunton says to me, *I 
come to the shore now and then, just to see how 
he's getting on. But I spend most of my time 
inland. I find I've so much to talk over with 
Gabriel. Not that he's quite the fellow he was. 
He always had rather a cult for Dante, you know, 
and now he's more than ever under the Florentine 
influence. He lives in a sort of monastery that 
Dante has here; and there he sits painting imagin- 
ary portraits of Beatrice, and giving them all to 
Dante. But he still has his great moments, and 
there's no one quite like him — no one. Algernon 



88 AND EVEN NOW 

won't ever come and see him, because that fellow 
Mazzini's as Anti-Clerical as ever and makes a 
principle of having nothing to do with Dante. 
Look! — there's Algernon going into the water 
again! He'll tire himself out, he'll catch cold, 
he'll — ' and here the old man rises and hurries 
down to the sea's edge. *Now, Algernon,' he 
roars, *I don't want to interfere with you, but I 
do think, my dear old friend,' — and then, with a 
guffaw, he breaks off, remembering that his friend 
is not deaf now nor old, and that here in Elysium, 
where no ills are, good advice is not needed. 



A LETTER THAT WAS NOT 
WRITTEN 



A LETTER THAT WAS NOT 
WRITTEN 

1914. 

ONE morning lately I saw in my newspaper 
an announcement that enraged me. It 
was made in the driest, most casual way, 
as though nobody would care a rap; and this did 
but whet the wrath I had in knowing that Adam 
Street, Adelphi, was to be undone. The Tivoli 
Music Hall, about to be demolished and built anew, 
was to have a frontage of thirty feet, if you please, 
in Adam Street. Why.^^ Because the London 
County Council, with its fixed idea that the happi- 
ness of mankind depends on the widening of the 
Strand, had decreed that the Tivoli's new frontage 
thereon should be thirty feet further back, and had 
granted as consolation to the Tivoli the right to 
spread itself around the corner and wreck the work 
of the Brothers Adam. Could not this outrage be 
averted? There sprang from my lips that fiery 
formula which has sprung from the lips of so many 
choleric old gentlemen in the course of the past 
hundred years and more: *I shall write to The 
Times.'' 

91 



92 AND EVEN NOW 

If Adam Street were a thing apart I should have 
been stricken enough, heaven knows, at thought of 
its beauty going, its dear tradition being lost. But 
not as an unrelated masterpiece was Adam Street 
built by the Brothers whose name it bears. An 
integral part it is in their noble design of the 
Adelphi. It is the very key to the Adelphi, the 
well-ordained initiation for us into that small, 
matchless quarter of London, where peace and dig- 
nity do still reign — peace the more beatific, and 
dignity the finer, b}^ instant contrast with the 
chaos of hideous sounds and sights hard by. What 
man so gross that, passing out of the Strand into 
Adam Street, down the mild slope to the river, he 
has not cursed the age he was born into — or blessed 
it because the Adelphi cannot in earlier days have 
had for any one this fullness of peculiar magic? 
Adam Street is not so beautiful as the serene Ter- 
race it goes down to, nor so curiously grand as 
crook-backed John Street. But the Brothers did not 
mean it to be so. They meant it just as an harmo- 
nious 'lead' to those inner glories of their scheme. 
Ruin that approach, and how much else do you ruin 
of a thing which — done perfectly by masters, and 
done by them here as nowhere else could they have 
done it — ought to be guarded by us very jealously! 
How to raise on this irregular and * barbarous' 
ground a quarter that should be * polite,' con- 
gruous in tone with the smooth river beyond it — 



A LETTER THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN 93 

this was the irresistible problem the Brothers set 
themselves and slowly, coolly, perfectly solved. So 
long as the Adelphi remains to us, a microcosm of 
the eighteenth century is ours. If there is any 

meaning in the word sacrilege 

That, I remember, was the beginning of one of 
the sentences I composed while I paced my room, 
thinking out my letter to The Times. I rejected 
that sentence. I rejected scores of others. They 
were all too vehement. Though my facility for 
indignation is not (I hope) less than that of my 
fellows, I never had written to The Times. And 
now, though I flattered myself I knew how the 
thing ought to be done, I was unsure that I could 
do it. Was I beginning too late? Restraint was 
the prime effect to be aimed at. If you are in- 
temperate, you don't convince. I wanted to con- 
vince the readers of The Times that the violation 
of the Adelphi was a thing to be prevented at all 
costs. Soberness of statement, a simple, direct, 
civic style, with only an underthrob of personal 
emotion, were what I must at all costs achieve. 
Not too much of mere aesthetics, either, nor of 
mere sentiment for the past. No more than a brief 
eulogy of ' those admirably proportioned streets so 
familiar to all students of eighteenth century archi- 
tecture,' and perhaps a passing reference to *the 
shades of Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Hannah More, Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, Topham Beauclerk, and how 



94 AND EVEN NOW 

many others!' The sooner my protest were put 
in terms of commerce, the better for my cause. 
The more clearly I were to point out that such 
antiquities as the Adelphi are as a magnet to the 
moneyed tourists of America and Europe, the like- 
lier would my readers be to shudder at *a proposal 
which, if carried into effect, will bring discredit on 
all concerned and will in some measure justify 
Napoleon's hitherto-unjustified taunt that we are 
a nation of shopkeepers. — I am, Sir, your obedient 
servant' — good! I sat down to a table and wrote 
out that conclusion, and then I worked backwards, 
keeping well in view the idea of * restraint.' But 
that quality which is little sister to restraint, and 
is yet far more repulsive to the public mind than 
vehemence, emerged to misguide my pen. Irony, 
in fact, played the deuce. I found myself writing 
that 'a nation which, in its ardour for beauty and 
its reverence for great historic associations, has 
lately disbursed after only a few months' hesitation 
£250,000 to save the Crystal Palace, where the 
bank holidays of millions of toilers have been spoilt 
by the utter gloom and nullity of the place — a 
nullity and gloom that will, however and of course, 
be dispelled so soon as the place is devoted to 
permanent exhibitions of New Zealand pippins, 
Rhodesian tobacco, Australian mutton, Canadian 
snow-shoes, and other glories of Empire — might 
surely not be asked in vain to' — but I deleted that 



A LETTER THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN 95 

sentence, and tried another in another vein. My 
desire to be straightforward did but topple me 
into excess of statement. My sorrow for the 
Adelphi came out as sentimentality, my anger 
against the authorities as vulgar abuse. Only the 
urgency of my cause upheld me. I would get my 
letter done somehow and post it. But there flitted 
through my mind that horrid doubt which has 
flitted through the minds of so many choleric old 
gentlemen in the course of the past hundred years 
and more: *Will The Times put my letter in.^^' 

If The Times wouldn't, what then? At least 
my conscience would be clear: I should have done 
what I could to save my beloved quarter. But the 
process of doing it was hard and tedious, and I was 
glad of the little respite presented by the thought 
that I must, before stating my case thoroughly, 
revisit Adam Street itself, to gauge precisely the 
extent of the mischief threatened there. On my 
way to the Strand I met an old friend, one of my 
links with whom is his love of the Adams' work. 
He had not read the news, and I am sorry to say 
that I, in my selfish agitation, did not break it to 
him gently. Rallying, he accompanied me on my 
sombre quest. 

I had forgotten there was a hosier's shop next to 
the Tivoli, at the corner of the right-hand side of 
Adam Street. We turned past it, and were both 
of us rather surprised that there were other shops 



96 AND EVEN NOW 

down that side. They ought never to have been 
allowed there; but there they were; and of course, 
I felt, it was the old f agades above them that really 
counted. We gazed meanwhile at the fagades on 
the left-hand side, feasting our eyes on the propor- 
tions of the pilasters, the windows ; the old seemly 
elegance of it all; the greatness of the manner 
with the sweet smallness of the scale it wrought 
on. 

'Well,' I said, turning abruptly away, *to busi- 
ness! Thirty feet — how much, about, is that?' 
My friend moved to the exact corner of the Strand, 
and then, steadily, methodically, with his eyes to 
the pavement, walked thirty toe-to-heel paces 
down Adam Street. 

'This,' he said, 'is where the corner of the 
Tivoli would come' — not 'will coine,' observe; I 
thanked him for that. He passed on, measuring 
out the thirty additional feet. There was in his 
demeanour something so finely official that I felt 
I should at least have the Government on my side. 

Thus it was with no sense of taking a farewell 
look, but rather to survey a thing half-saved 
already, that I crossed over to the other side of the 
road, and then, lifting my eyes, and looking to and 
fro, beheld — what? 

I blankly indicated the thing to my friend. How 
long had it been there, that horrible, long, high 
frontage of grey stone? It must surely have been 



A LETTER THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN 97 

there before either of us was born. It seemed to 
be a very perfect specimen of 1860-1870 architec- 
ture — perfect in its pretentious and hateful smug- 
ness. 

And neither of us had ever known it was there. 

Neither of us, therefore, could afford to laugh at 
the other; nor did either of us laugh at himself; 
we just went blankly away, and parted. I daresay 
my friend found presently, as I did, balm in the 
knowledge that the Tivoli's frontage wouldn't, 
because it couldn't, be so bad as that which we 
had just, for the first time, seen. 

For me there was another, a yet stronger, balm. 
And I went as though I trod on air, my heart 
singing within me. For I had not, after all, to 
resume my task of writing that letter to The 
Times. 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 

1914. 

THEY must, I suppose, be classed among 
Pi^Xia a^ifiXia, Ignored in the catalogue of 
any library, not one of them lurking in any 
uttermost cavern under the reading-room of the 
British Museum, none of them ever printed even 
for private circulation, these books written by 
this and that character in fiction are books only 
by courtesy and good will. 

But how few, after all, the books that are books ! 
Charles Lamb let his kind heart master him when 
he made that too brief list of books that arent. 
Book is an honourable title, not to be conferred 
lightly. A volume is not necessarily, as Lamb 
would have had us think, a book because it can be 
read without diflSculty. The test is, whether 
it was worth reading. Had the author something 
to set forth .f^ And had he the specific gift for 
setting it forth in written words .^^ And did he use 
this rather rare gift conscientiously and to the full.f^ 
And were his words well and appropriately printed 
and bound ? If you can say Yes to these questions, 
then only, I submit, is the title of *book' deserved. 

101 



102 AND EVEN NOW 

If Lamb were alive now, he certainly would draw 
the line closer than he did. Published volumes 
were few in his day (though not, of course, few 
enough). Even he, in all the plenitude of his 
indulgence, would now have to demur that at 
least 90 per cent, of the volumes that the publishers 
thrust on us, so hectically, every spring and 
autumn, are apif^XCa. 

What would he have to say of the novels, for 
example.^ These commodities are all very well 
in their way, no doubt. But let us have no illu- 
sions as to what their way is. The poulterer who 
sells strings of sausages does not pretend that every 
individual sausage is in itself remarkable. He does 
not assure us that 'this is a sausage that gives 
furiously to think,' or *this is a singularly beautiful 
and human sausage,' or *this is undoubtedly the 
sausage of the year.' Why are such distinctions 
drawn by the publisher? When he publishes, as 
he sometimes does, a novel that is a book (or at 
any rate would be a book if it were decently printed 
and bound) then by all means let him proclaim 
its difference — even at the risk of scaring away 
the majority of readers. 

I admit that I myself might be found in that 
majority. I am shy of masterpieces; nor is 
this merely because of the many times I have 
been disappointed at not finding anything at 
all like what the publishers expected me to find. 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 103 

As a matter of fact, those disappointments are 
dim in my memory: it is long since I ceased to 
take publishers' opinions as my guide. I trust now, 
for what I ought to read, to the advice of a few 
highly literary friends. But so soon as I am told 
that I *must' read this or that, and have replied 
that I instantly will, I become strangely loth to 
do anything of the sort. And what I like about 
books within books is that they never can prick my 
conscience. It is extraordinarily comfortable that 
they don't exist. 

And yet — ^f or, even as Must implants distaste, so 
does Can't stir sweet longings — how eagerly would 
I devour these books within books! What fun, 
what a queer emotion, to fish out from a fourpenny- 
box, in a windy by-street, Walter Lorraine, by 
Arthur Pendennis, or Passion Flowers, by 
Rosa Bunion! I suppose poor Rosa's muse, so 
fair and so fervid in Rosa's day, would seem a 
trifle fatigued now; but what allowances one would 
make! Lord Steyne said of Walter Lorraine 
that it was 'very clever and wicked.' I fancy we 
should apply neither epithet now. Indeed, I 
have always suspected that Pen's maiden effort 
may have been on a plane with *The Great Hog- 
garty Diamond.'^ Yet I vow would I not skip a 
line of it. 

Who Put Back the Clock.^ is another work 
which I especially covet. Poor Gideon Forsyth! 



104 AND EVEN NOW 

He was abominably treated, as Stevenson relates, 
in the matter of that grand but grisly piano; and 
I have always hoped that perhaps, in the end, as 
a sort of recompense. Fate ordained that the 
novel he had anonymously written should be 
rescued from oblivion and found by discerning 
critics to be not at all bad. 

He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate 
friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and alarm- 
ing failure, the modesty of the author had become more pressing, 
and the secret was now likely to be better kept than that of the 
authorship of 'Waverley,' 

Such an humiliation as Gideon's is the more 
poignant to me because it is so rare in English 
fiction. In nine cases out of ten, a book within a 
book is an immediate, an immense success. 

On the whole, our novelists have always tended 
to optimism — especially they who have written 
mainly to please their public. It pleases the public 
to read about any sort of success. The greater, 
the more sudden and violent the success, the 
more valuable is it as ingredient in a novel. And, 
since the average novelist lives always in a dream 
that one of his works will somehow * catch on' 
as no other work ever has caught on yet, it is very 
natural that he should fondly try meanwhile to 
get this dream realised for him, vicariously, by this 
or that creature of his fancy. True, he is usually 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 105 

too self-conscious to let this creature achieve his 
sudden fame and endless fortune through a novel. 
Usually it is a play that does the trick. In the 
Victorian time it was almost always a book of 
poems. Oh for the spacious days of Tennyson 
and Swinburne! In how many a three- volume 
novel is mentioned some * slim octavo ' which seems, 
from the account given, to have been as arresting 
as 'Poems and Ballads' without being less ac- 
ceptable than 'Idylls of the King'! These verses 
were always the anonymous work of some very 
young, very poor man, who supposed they had 
fallen still-born from the press until one day, 
a week or so after publication, as he walked 
'moodily' and 'in a brown study' along the 
Strand, having given up all hope now that he 
would ever be in a position to ask Hilda to be his 
wife, a friend accosted him — 'Seen "The Thun- 
derer" this morning? By George, there's a 
column review of a new book of poems,' etc. In 
some three-volume novel that I once read at a 
seaside place, having borrowed it from the little 
circulating library, there was a young poet whose 
sudden leap into the front rank has always laid 
a special hold on my imagination. The name of 
the novel itself I cannot recall; but I remember 
the name of the young poet — Aylmer Deane; 
and the forever unforgettable title of his book of 
verse was Foments: Being Poems of the Mood 



106 AND EVEN NOW 

AND THE Moment. What would I not give to 
possess a copy of that work? 

Though he had suffered, and though suffering 
is a soverign preparation for great work, I did 
not at the onset foresee that Aylmer Deane 
was destined to wear the laurel. In real life I 
have rather sl flair for future eminence. In novels 
I am apt to be wise only after the event. There 
the young men who do in due course take the 
town by storm have seldom shown (to my dull 
eyes) promise. Their spoken thoughts have seemed 
to me no more profound or pungent than my own. 
All that is best in these authors goes into their 
work. But, though I complain of them on this 
count, I admit that the thrill for me of their 
triumphs is the more rapturous because every time 
it catches me unawares. One of the greatest 
emotions I ever had was from the triumph of 
The Gift of Gifts. Of this novel within a novel 
the author was not a young man at all, but an 
elderly clergyman whose life had been spent in a 
little rural parish. He was a dear, simple old man, 
a widower. He had a large family, a small stipend. 
Judge, then, of his horror when he found that his 
eldest son, *a scholar at Christminster College, 
Oxbridge,' had run into debt for many hundreds 
of pounds. Where to turn? The father was too 
proud to borrow of the neighbourly nobleman 
who in Oxbridge days had been his *chum.' Nor 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 107 

had the father ever practised the art of writing. 
(We are told that *his sermons were always ex- 
tempore,') But, years ago, *he had once thought 
of writing a novel based on an experience which 
happened to a friend of his.' This novel, in the 
fullness of time, he now proceeded to write, though 
'without much hope of success.' He knew that 
he was suffering from heart-disease. But he worked 
'feverishly, night after night,' we are told, *in his 
old faded dressing-gown, till the dawn mingled 
with the light of his candle and warned him to 
snatch a few hours' rest, failing which he would be 
little able to perform the round of parish duties 
that awaited him in the daytime.' No wonder he 
had *not much hope.' No wonder I had no spark 
of hope for him. But what are obstacles for but 
to be overleapt? What avails heart-disease, what 
avail eld and feverish haste and total lack of liter- 
ary training, as against the romantic instinct of 
the lady who created the Rev. Charles Hailing? 
'The Gift of Gifts was acclaimed as a master- 
piece by all the first-class critics.' Also, it very 
soon ' brought in ' ten times as much money as was 
needed to pay off the debts of its author's eldest 
son. Nor, though Charles Hailing died some 
months later, are we told that he died from the 
strain of composition. We are left merely to re- 
joice at knowing he knew at the last ' that his whole 
family was provided for.' 



108 AND EVEN NOW 

I wonder why it is that, whilst these Charles 
Hailings and Aylmer Deanes delightfully abound 
in the lower reaches of English fiction, we have 
so seldom found in the work of our great novelists 
anything at all about the writing of a great book. 
It is true, of course, that our great novelists have 
never had for the idea of literature itself Hhat 
passion which has always burned in the great 
French ones. Their own art has never seemed 
to them the most important and interesting thing 
in life. Also it is true that they have had other 
occupations — fox-hunting, preaching, editing mag- 
azines, what not. Yet to them literature must, 
as their own main task, have had a peculiar interest 
and importance. No fine work can be done with- 
out concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and 
doubt. It is nonsense to imagine that our great 
novelists have just forged ahead or ambled along, 
reaching their goal, in the good old English fashion, 
by sheer divination of the way to it. A fine 
book, with all that goes to the making of it, is as 
fine a theme as a novelist can have. But it is a 
part of English hypocrisy — or, let it be more politely 
said, English reserve — that, whilst we are fluent 
enough in grumbling about small inconveniences, 
we insist on making light of any great difficulties 
or griefs that may beset us. And just there, I 
suppose, is the reason why our great novelists 
have shunned great books as subject-matter. 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 109 

It is fortunate for us (jarring though it is to our 
patriotic sense) that Mr. Henry James was not 
born an Englishman, that he was born of a race of 
speciaHsts — men who are impenitent speciaHsts in 
whatever they take up, be it sport, commerce, 
poKtics, anything. And it is fortunate for us that 
in Paris, and in the straitest Hterary sect there, 
his method began to form itself, and the art of 
prose fiction became to him a religion. In that art 
he finds as much inspiration as Swinburne found 
in the art of poetry. Just as Swinburne was 
the most learned of our poets, so is Mr. James 
the most learned of our — let us say 'our' — 
prose-writers. I doubt whether the heaped total 
of his admirations would be found to outweigh 
the least one of the admirations that Swinburne 
had. But, though he has been a level-headed 
reader of the works that are good enough for him 
to praise, his abstract passion for the art of fiction 
itself has always been fierce and constant. Partly 
to the Parisian, partly to the American element in 
him we owe the stories that he, and of 'our' great 
writers he only, has written about books and the 
writers of books. 

Here, indeed, in these incomparable stories, 
are imaginary great books that are as real to us 
as real ones are. Sometimes, as in 'The Author 
of "Beltraffio,"' a great book itself is the very 
hero of the story. (We are not told what exactly 



110 AND EVEN NOW 

was the title of that second book which Ambient's 
wife so hated that she let her child die rather than 
that he should grow up under the influence of its 
author; but I have a queer conviction that it was 
The Daisies.) Usually, in these stories, it is 
through the medium of some ardent young disciple, 
speaking in the first person, that we become 
familiar with the great writer. It is thus that we 
know Hugh Vereker, throughout whose twenty 
volumes was woven that message, or meaning, that 
'figure in the carpet,' which eluded even the elect. 
It is thus that we know Neil Paraday, the MS. of 
whose last book was mislaid and lost so tragic- 
ally, so comically. And it is also through Para- 
day's disciple that we make incidental acquaintance 
with Guy Walsingham, the young lady who wrote 
Obsessions, and with Dora Forbes, the burly 
man with a red moustache, who wrote The Other 
Way Round. These two books are the only 
inferior books mentioned by Mr. James. But stay, 
I was forgetting The Top of the Tree, by Amy 
Evans; and also those nearly forty volumes by 
Henry St. George. For all the greatness of his 
success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest 
of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His 
Shadowmere was splendid, and its splendour 
is the measure of his shame — the shame he bore 
so bravely — in the ruck of his 'output.' He is 
the only one of those authors who did not do his 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 111 

best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 
* generous and dehcate and pursued the prize.' He 
is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, 
the author of The Middle Years. Dencombe' s 
grievance was against fate, not against himself. 

It had taken too much of his life to produce too little of his 
art. The art had come, but it had come after everything else. 
"Ah, for another go! — ah, for a better chance.' . . . *A second 
chance — that's the delusion. There never was to be but one. 
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what, we 
have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. 
The rest is the madness of art.' 

The scene of Dencombe's death is one of the most 
deeply-beautiful things ever done by Mr. James. 
It is so beautiful as to be hardly sad; it rises 
and glows and gladdens. It is more exquisite 
than anything in The Middle Years. No, I will 
not say that. Mr. James's art can always carry 
to us the conviction that his characters' books are 
as fine as his own. 

I crave — it may be a foolish whim, but I do 
crave — ocular evidence for my belief that those 
books w^ere written and were published. I want 
to see them all ranged along goodly shelves. 
A few days ago I sat in one of those libraries 
which seem to be doorless. Nowhere, to the eye, 
was broken the array of serried volumes. Each 
door was flush with the surrounding shelves; 
across each the edges of the shelves were mimicked 



112 AND EVEN NOW 

and in the spaces between these edges the backs of 
books were pasted congruously with the whole 
effect. Some of these backs had been taken from 
actual books, others had been made specially 
and were stamped with facetious titles that rather 
depressed me. 'Here,' thought I, 'are the shelves 
on which Dencombe's works ought to be made 
manifest. And Neil Faraday's too, and Vereker's.' 
Not Henry St. George's, of course: he would not 
himself have wished it, poor fellow ! I would have 
nothing of his except Shadowmere. But Ray 
Limbert! — I would have all of his, including a first 
edition of The Major Key, 'that fiery -hearted 
rose as to which we watched in private the forma- 
tion of petal after petal, and flame after flame'; 
and also The Hidden Heart, 'the shortest of 
his novels, but perhaps the loveliest,' as Mr. James 
and I have always thought. . . . How my fingers 
would hover along these shelves, always just going 
to alight, but never, lest the spell were broken, 
alighting! 

How well they would look there, those treasures 
of mine! And, most of them having been issued 
in the seemly old three-volume form, how many 
shelves they would fill ! But I should find a place 
certainly for a certain small brown book adorned 
with a gilt griffin between wheatsheaves. The 
Pilgrim's Scrip, that delightful though anonymous 
work of my old friend Austin Absworthy Bearne 



BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 113 

Feverel. And I should like to find a place for 
Poems, by Aurora Leigh. Mr. Snodgrass's book 
of verses might grace one of the lower shelves. 
(What is the title of it? Amelia's Bower, I 
hazard.) Recollections of the Late Lord 
Byron and Others, by Captain Sumph, would be 
somewhere; for Sumph did, you will be glad to hear, 
take Shandon's advice and compile a volume. 
Bungay published it. Indeed, of the books for 
which I should find room there are a good few 
that bear the imprimatur of Bungay. Despera- 
tion, OR The Fugitive Duchess, by The Hon. 
Percy Popjoy, was Bungay's; and so, of course, 
were Passion Flowers and Walter Lorraine. 
Of the books issued by the rival firm of Bacon I 
possess but one: Memoirs of the Poisoners, by 
Dr. Slocum. Near to Popjoy's romance would be 
The Lady Flabella, of which Mrs. Wititterly said 
to Kate Nickleby, 'So voluptuous, is it not — so 
soft.^' Who Put Back thh Clock? would have 
a place of honour (unearned by its own merits?). 
Among other novels that I could not spare. The 
Gift of Gifts would conspicuously gleam. As for 
Foments — ah, I should not be content with one 
copy of that. Even at the risk of crowding out a 
host of treasures, I vow I would have a copy of 
every one of the editions that Foments ran 
through. 



THE GOLDEN DRUGGET 



THE GOLDEN DRUGGET 

1918. 

PRIMITIVE and essential things have great 
power to touch the heart of the beholder. 
I mean such things as a man ploughing a 
field, or sowing or reaping; a girl filling a pitcher 
from a spring; a young mother with her child; 
a fisherman mending his nets; a light from a 
lonely hut on a dark night. 

Things such as these are the best themes for 
poets and painters, and appeal to aught that there 
may be of painter or poet in any one of us. Strictly, 
they are not so old as the hills, but they are more 
significant and eloquent than hills. Hills will 
outlast them; but hills glacially surviving the 
life of man on this planet are of as little account as 
hills tremulous and hot in ages before the life of 
man had its beginning. Nature is interesting only 
because of us. And the best symbols of us are 
such sights as I have just mentioned — sights unal- 
terable by fashion of time or place, sights that in all 
countries always were and never will not be. 

It is true that in many districts nowadays there 
are elaborate new kinds of machinery for ploughing 

117 



118 AND EVEN NOW 

the fields and reaping the corn. In the most 
progressive districts of all, I daresay, the very 
sowing of the grain is done by means of some en- 
gine, with better results than could be got by hand. 
For aught I know, there is a patented invention 
for catching fish by electricity. It is natural that 
we should, in some degree, pride ourselves on such 
triumphs. It is well that we should have poems 
about them, and pictures of them. But such 
poems and pictures cannot touch our hearts very 
deeply. They cannot stir in us the sense of our 
kinship with the whole dim past and the whole 
dim future. The ancient Egyptians were great at 
scientific dodges — very great indeed, nearly as 
great as we, the archaeologists tell us. Sand buried 
the memory of those dodges for a rather long time. 
How are we to know that the glories of our present 
civilisation will never be lost.^^ The world's coal- 
mines and oil-fields are exhaustible; and it is not, 
I am told, by any means certain that scientists will 
discover any good substitutes for the materials 
which are necessary to mankind's present pitch of 
glory. Mankind may, I infer, have to sink back 
into slow and simple ways, continent be once more 
separated from continent, nation from nation, 
village from village. And, even supposing that the 
present rate of traction and communication and all 
the rest of it can forever be maintained, is our 
modern way of life so great a success that mankind 



THE GOLDEN DRUGGET 119 

will surely never be willing to let it lapse? Doubt- 
less, that present rate can be not only maintained, 
but also accelerated immensely, in the near future. 
Will these greater glories be voted, even by the 
biggest fools, an improvement? We smile already 
at the people of the early nineteenth century who 
thought that the vistas opened by applied science 
were very heavenly. We have travelled far along 
those vistas. Light is not abundant in them, is it? 
We are proud of having gone such a long way, 
but . . . peradventure, those who come after us 
will turn back, sooner or later, of their own accord. 
This is a humbling thought. If the wonders of our 
civilisation are doomed, we should prefer them to 
cease through lack of the minerals and mineral 
products that keep them going. Possibly they are 
not doomed at all. But this chance counts for 
little as against the certainty that, whatever 
happens, the primitive and essential things will 
never, anywhere, wholly cease, while mankind 
lasts. And thus it is that Brown's Ode to the Steam 
Plough, Jones' Sonnet Sequence on the Automatic 
Reaping Machine, and Robinson's Epic of the 
Piscicidal Dynamo, leave unstirred the deeper 
depths of emotion in us. The subjects chosen 
by these three great poets do not much impress 
us when we regard them sub specie aeternitatis. 
Smith has painted nothing more masterly than his 
picture of a girl turning a hot- water tap. But has 



120 AND EVEN NOW 

he never seen a girl fill a pitcher from a spring? 
Smithers' picture of a young mother seconding a 
resolution at a meeting of a Board of Guardians is 
magnificent, as brush work. But why not have cut 
out the Board and put in the baby? I yield to no 
one in admiration of Smithkins' 'Fagade of the 
Waldorf Hotel by Night, in Peace Time.' But a 
single light from a lonely hut would have been a 
finer theme. 

I should like to show Smithkins the thing that I 
call The Golden Drugget. Or rather, as this thing 
is greatly romantic to me, and that painter is so 
unfortunate in his surname, I should like Smith- 
kins to find it for himself. 

These words are written in war time and in 
England. There are, I hear, * lighting restric- 
tions' even on the far Riviera di Levante. I take 
it that the Golden Drugget is not outspread now- 
anights across the high dark coast-road between 
Rapallo and Zoagli. But the lonely wayside inn 
is still there, doubtless; and its narrow door will 
again stand open, giving out for wayfarers its 
old span of brightness into darkness, when peace 
comes. 

It is nothing by daylight, that inn. If anything, 
it is rather an oflFence. Steep behind it rise moun- 
tains that are grey all over with olive trees, and 
beneath it, on the other side of the road, the cliff 
falls sheer to the sea. The road is white, the sea 



THE GOLDEN DRUGGET 121 

and sky are usually of a deep bright blue, there 
are many smgle cypresses among the olives. It is 
a scene of good colour and noble form. It is a gay 
and a grand scene, in which the inn, though un- 
assuming, is unpleasing, if you pay attention to it. 
An ugly little box-like inn. A stuffy-looking and 
uninviting inn. Salt and tobacco, it announces in 
faint letters above the door, may be bought there. 
But one would prefer to buy these things elsewhere. 
There is a bench outside, and a rickety table with 
a zinc top to it, and sometimes a peasant or two 
drinking a glass or two of wine. The proprietress 
is very unkempt. To Don Quixote she would have 
seemed a princess, and the inn a castle, and the 
peasants notable magicians. Don Quixote would 
have paused here and done something. Not so 
do I. 

By daylight, on the way down from my little 
home to Rapallo, or up from Rapallo home, I am 
indeed hardly conscious that this inn exists. By 
moonlight, too it is negligible. Stars are rather 
unbecoming to it. But on a thoroughly dark night, 
when it is manifest as nothing but a strip of yellow 
light cast across the road from an ever-open door, 
great always is its magic for me. Is '^ I mean was. 
But then, I mean also will he. And so I cleave 
to the present tense — the nostalgic present, as 
grammarians might call it. 

Likewise, when I say that thoroughly dark nights 



122 AND EVEN NOW 

are rare here, I mean that they are rare in the 
Gulf of Genoa. Clouds do not seem to like our 
landscape. But it has often struck me that 
Italian nights, whenever clouds do congregate, are 
somehow as much darker than English nights as 
Italian days are brighter than days in England. 
They have a heavier and thicker nigritude. They 
shut things out from you more impenetrably. 
They enclose you as in a small pavilion of black 
velvet. This tenement is not very comfortable in 
a strong gale. It makes you feel rather helpless. 
And gales can be strong enough, in the late 
autumn, on the Riviera di Levante. 

It is on nights when the wind blows its hardest, 
but makes no rift anywhere for a star to peep 
through, that the Golden Drugget, as I approach it, 
gladdens my heart the most. The distance between 
Rapallo and my home up yonder is rather more 
than two miles. The road curves and zigzags 
sharply, for the most part; but at the end of the 
first mile it runs straight for three or four hundred 
yards ; and, as the inn stands at a point midway on 
this straight course, the Golden Drugget is visible 
to me long before I come to it. Even by starlight, 
it is good to see. How much better, if I happen 
to be out on a black rough night when nothing is 
disclosed but this one calm bright thing. Nothing? 
Well, there has been descriable, all the way, a 
certain grey glimmer immediately in front of my 



THE GOLDEN DRUGGET 123 

feet. This, in point of fact, is the road, and 
by following it carefully I have managed to escape 
collision with trees, bushes, stone walls. The 
continuous shrill wailing of trees' branches writhing 
unseen but near, and the great hoarse roar of the 
sea against the rocks far down below, are no cheer- 
ful accompaniment for the buffeted pilgrim. He 
feels that he is engaged in single combat with 
Nature at her unfriendliest. He isn't sure that she 
hasn't supernatural allies working with her — 
witches on broomsticks circling closely round him, 
demons in pursuit of him or waiting to leap out 
on him. And how about mere robbers and cut- 
throats .^^ Suppose — but look! that streak, yonder, 
look! — the Golden Drugget. 

There it is, familiar, serene, festal. That the 
pilgrim knew he would see it in due time does not 
diminish for him the queer joy of seeing it; nay, 
this emotion would be far less without that fore- 
knowledge. Some things are best at first sight. 
Others — and here is one of them — do ever improve 
by recognition. I remember that when first I 
beheld this steady strip of light, shed forth over a 
threshold level with the road, it seemed to me 
conceivably sinister. It brought Stevenson to my 
mind: the chink of doubloons and the clash of 
cutlasses; and I think I quickened pace as I passed 
it. But now! — now it inspires in me a sense of 
deep trust and gratitude; and such awe as I have 



124 AND EVEN NOW 

for it is altogether a loving awe, as for holy ground 
that should be trod lightly. A drugget of crimson 
cloth across a London pavement is rather resented 
by the casual passer-by, as saying to him *Step 
across me, stranger, but not along me, not in!' 
and for answer he spurns it with his heel. * Stranger, 
come in!' is the clear message of the Golden 
Drugget. 'This is but a humble and earthly 
hostel, yet you will find here a radiant company of 
angels and archangels.' And always I cherish 
the belief that if I obeyed the summons I should 
receive fulfilment of the promise. Well, the beliefs 
that one most cherishes one is least willing to test. 
I do not go in at that open door. But lingering, 
but reluctant, is my tread as I pass by it; and 
I pause to bathe in the light that is as the span of 
our human life, granted between one great dark- 
ness and another. 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 

igi8. 

BEAUTIFULLY vague though the English 
language is, with its meanings merging 
into one another as softly as the facts of 
landscape in the moist English climate, and much 
addicted though we always have been to ways of 
compromise, and averse from sharp hard logical 
outlines, we do not call a host a guest, nor a guest 
a host. The ancient Romans did so. They, with 
a language that was as lucid as their climate 
and was a perfect expression of the sharp hard 
logical outlook fostered by that climate, had but 
one word for those two things. Nor have their 
equally acute descendants done what might have 
been expected of them in this matter. Hote and 
ospite and kespide are as mysteriously equivocal as 
hospes. By weight of all this authority I find my- 
self being dragged to the conclusion that a host and 
a guest must be the same thing, after all. Yet in a 
dim and muzzy way, deep down in my breast, 
I feel sure that they are different. Compromise, 
you see, as usual. I take it that strictly the two 
things are one, but that our division of them is 

127 



128 AND EVEN NOW 

yet another instance of that sterling common-sense 
by which, etc., etc. 

I would go even so far as to say that the difference 
is more than merely circumstantial and particular. 
I seem to discern also a temperamental and general 
difference. You ask me to dine with you in a 
restaurant, I say I shall be delighted, you order 
the meal, I praise it, you pay for it, I have the 
pleasant sensation of not paying for it; and it is 
well that each of us should have a label according 
to the part he plays in this transaction. But the 
two labels are applicable in a larger and more 
philosophic way. In every human being one or the 
other of these two instincts is predominant: the 
active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the 
negative or passive instinct to accept it. And 
either of these instincts is so significant of character 
that one might well say that mankind is divisible 
into two great classes : hosts and guests. 

I have already (see third sentence of foregoing 
paragraph) somewhat prepared you for the shock 
of a confession which candour now forces from 
me. I am one of the guests. You are, however, 
so shocked that you will read no more of me.f^ 
Bravo! Your refusal indicates that you have not 
a guestish soul. Here am I trying to entertain 
you, and you will not be entertained. You stand 
shouting that it is more blessed to give than to re- 
ceive. Very well. For my part, I would rather read 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 129 

than write, any day. You shall write this essay for 
me. Be it never so humble, I shall give it my best 
attention and manage to say something nice about 
it. I am sorry to see you calming suddenly down. 
Nothing but a sense of duty to myself, and to 
guests in general, makes me resume my pen. I 
believe guests to be as numerous, really, as hosts. 
It may be that even you, if you examine yourself 
dispassionately, will find that you are one of them. 
In which case, you may yet thank me for some 
comfort. I think there are good qualities to be 
found in guests, and some bad ones in even the 
best hosts. 

Our deepest instincts, bad or good, are those 
which we share with the rest of the animal creation. 
To offer hospitality, or to accept it, is but an 
instinct which man has acquired in the long course 
of his self-development. Lions do not ask one 
another to their lairs, nor do birds keep open nest. 
Certain wolves and tigers, it is true, have been so 
seduced by man from their natural state they they 
will deign to accept man's hospitality. But when 
you give a bone to your dog, does he run out and 
invite another dog to share it with him.f^ — and does 
your cat insist on having a circle of other cats 
around her saucer of milk? Quite the contrary. 
A deep sense of personal property is common to all 
these creatures. Thousands of years hence they 
may have acquired some willingness to share things 



130 AND EVEN NOW 

with their friends. Or rather, dogs may; cats, 
I think, not. Meanwhile, let us not be censorious. 
Though certain monkeys assuredly were of finer 
and more malleable stuff than any wolves or tigers, 
it was a very long time indeed before even we 
began to be hospitable. The cavemen did not 
entertain. It may be that now and again — say, 
towards the end of the Stone Age — one or another 
among the more enlightened of them said to his 
wife, while she plucked an eagle that he had snared 
the day before, 'That red-haired man who lives 
in the next valley seems to be a decent, harmless 
sort of person. And sometimes I fancy he is rather 
lonely. I think I will ask him to dine with us 
to-night,' and, presently going out, met the red- 
haired man and said to him, 'Are you doing any- 
thing to-night.^ If not, won't you dine with us? 
It would be a great pleasure to my wife. Only 
ourselves. Come just as you are.' 'That is most 
good of you, but,' stammered the red-haired man, 
'as ill-luck will have it, I am engaged to-night. 
A long-standing, formal invitation. I wish I could 
get out of it, but I simply can't. I have a morbid 
conscientiousness about such things.' Thus we 
see that the will to offer hospitality w^as an earlier 
growth than the will to accept it. But we must 
beware of thinking these two things identical with 
the mere will to give and the mere will to receive. 
It is unlikely that the red-haired man would have 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 131 

refused a slice of eagle if it had been offered to 
him where he stood. And it is still more unlikely 
that his friend would have have handed it to him. 
Such is not the way of hosts. The hospitable 
instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride 
and egoism mixed up with it, as I shall show. 

Meanwhile, why did the red-haired man babble 
those excuses .f^ It was because he scented danger. 
He was not by nature suspicious, but — what pos- 
sible motive, except murder, could this man have 
for enticing him to that cave.f^ Acquaintance in the 
open valley was all very well and pleasant, but a 
strange den after dark — no, no ! You despise him 
for his fears .^ Yet these were not really so absurd 
as they may seem. As man progressed in civilisa- 
tion, and grew to be definitely gregarious, hospi- 
tality became more a matter of course. But even 
then it was not above suspicion. It was not hedged 
around with those unwritten laws which make it 
the safe and eligible thing we know to-day. In the 
annals of hospitality there are many pages that 
make painful reading; many a great dark blot is 
there which the Recording Angel may wish, but 
will not be able, to wipe out with a tear. 

If I were a host, I should ignore those tomes. 
Being a guest, I sometimes glance into them, 
but with more of horror, I assure you, than of 
malicious amusement. I carefully avoid those 
which treat of hospitality among barbarous races. 



132 AND EVEN NOW 

Things done in the best periods of the most en- 
lightened peoples are quite bad enough. The 
Israelites were the salt of the earth. But can you 
imagine a deed of colder-blooded treachery than 
Jael's.f^ You would think it must have been held 
accursed by even the basest minds. Yet thus sang 
Deborah and Barak, 'Blessed above women shall 
Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall 
she be among women in the tent.' And Barak, 
remember, was a gallant soldier, and Deborah was 
a prophetess who 'judged Israel at that time.' 
So much for the ideals of hospitality among the 
children of Israel. 

Of the Homeric Greeks it may be said that they 
too were the salt of the earth; and it may be added 
that in their pungent and antiseptic quality there 
was mingled a measure of sweetness, not to be found 
in the children of Israel. I do not say outright 
that Odysseus ought not to have slain the suitors. 
That is a debatable point. It is true that they 
were guests under his roof. But he had not invited 
them. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt. 
I am thinking of another episode in his life. By 
what Circe did, and by his disregard of what she 
had done, a searching light is cast on the laxity 
of Homeric Greek notions as to what was due to 
guests. Odysseus was a clever, but not a bad man, 
and his standard of general conduct was high 
enough. Yet, having foiled Circe in her purpose 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 133 

to turn him into a swine, and having forced her to 
restore his comrades to human shape, he did not 
let pass the barrier of his teeth any such winged 
words as *Now will I bide no more under thy 
roof, Circe, but fare across the sea with my dear 
comrades, even unto mine own home, for that which 
thou didst was an evil thing, and one not meet to 
be done unto strangers by the daughter of a god.' 
He seems to have said nothing in particular, to have 
accepted with alacrity the invitation that he and 
his dear comrades should prolong their visit, and 
to have prolonged it with them for a whole year, 
in the course of which Circe bore him a son, named 
Telegonus. As Matthew Arnold would have said, 
'What a set!' 

My eye roves, for relief, to those shelves where 
the later annals are. I take down a tome at ran- 
dom. Rome in the fifteenth century: civilisation 
never was more brilliant than there and then, I 
imagine; and yet — no, I replace that tome. I 
saw enough in it to remind me that the Borgias 
selected and laid down rare poisons in their cellars 
with as much thought as they gave to their vintage 
wines. Extraordinary! — but the Romans do not 
seem to have thought so. An invitation to dine 
at the Palazzo Borghese was accounted the highest 
social honour. I am aware that in recent books of 
Italian history there has been a tendency to whiten 
the Borgias' characters. But I myself hold to the 



134 AND EVEN NOW 

old romantic black way of looking at the Borgias. I 
maintain that though you would often in the 
fifteenth century have heard the snobbish Roman 
say, in a would-be-off-hand tone, *I am dining with 
the Borgias to-night,' no Roman ever was able 
to say *I dined last night with the Borgias.' 

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady 
Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all 
that a host and hostess should not be. Hence the 
marked coolness of Scotsmen towards Shakespeare, 
hence the untiring efforts of that proud and sensi- 
tive race to set up Burns in his stead. It is a risky 
thing to offer sympathy to the proud and sensitive, 
yet I must say that I think the Scots have a real 
grievance. The two actual, historic Macbeths were 
no worse than innumerable other couples in other 
lands that had not yet fully struggled out of 
barbarism. It is hard that Shakespeare happened 
on the story of that particular pair, and so made it 
immortal. But he meant no harm, and let Scots- 
men believe me, did positive good. Scotch hos- 
pitality is proverbial. As much in Scotland as in 
America does the English visitor blush when he 
thinks how perfunctory and niggard, in comparison, 
English hospitality is. It was Scotland that first 
formalised hospitality, made of it an exacting code 
of honour, with the basic principle that the guest 
must in all circumstances be respected and at all 
costs protected. Jacobite history bristles with 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 135 

examples of the heroic sacrifices made by hosts for 
their guests, sacrifices of their own safety and 
even of their own pohtical convictions, for fear of 
infringing, however slightly, that sacred code of 
theirs. And what was the origin of all this noble 
pedantry? Shakespeare's * Macbeth.' 

Perhaps if England were a bleak and rugged 
country, like Scotland, or a new country, like 
America, the foreign visitor would be more over- 
whelmed with kindness here than he is. The 
landscapes of our country-side are so charming, 
London abounds in public monuments so redolent 
of history, so romantic and engrossing, that we are 
perhaps too apt to think the foreign visitor would 
have neither time nor inclination to sit dawdling 
in private dining-rooms. Assuredly there is no 
lack of hospitable impulse among the English. 
In what may be called mutual hospitality they 
touch a high level. The French, also the Italians, 
entertain one another far less frequently. In 
England the native guest has a very good time 
indeed — though of course he pays for it, in some 
measure, by acting as host too, from time to time. 

In practice, no, there cannot be any absolute 
division of mankind into my two categories, hosts 
and guests. But psychologically a guest does not 
cease to be a guest when he gives a dinner, nor is a 
host not a host when he accepts one. The amount of 
entertaining that a guest need do is a matter wholly 



136 AND EVEN NOW 

for his own conscience. He will soon find that he 
does not receive less hospitality for offering little; 
and he would not receive less if he offered none. 
The amount received by him depends wholly on 
the degree of his agreeableness. Pride makes an 
occasional host of him; but he does not shine in 
that capacity. Nor do hosts want him to assay it. 
If they accept an invitation from him, they do so 
only because they wish not to hurt his feelings. 
As guests they are fish out of water. 

Circumstances do, of course, react on character. 
It is conventional for the rich to give, and for the 
poor to receive. Riches do tend to foster in you 
the instincts of a host, and poverty does create an 
atmosphere favourable to the growth of guestish 
instincts. But strong bents make their own way. 
Not all guests are to be found among the needy, 
nor all hosts among the affluent. For sixteen years 
after my education was, by courtesy, finished — 
from the age, that is, of twenty-two to the age of 
thirty-eight — I lived in London, seeing all sorts 
of people all the while; and I came across many 
a rich man who, like the master of the shepherd 
Corin, was * of churlish disposition' and little recked 
*to find the way to heaven by doing deeds of 
hospitality.' On the other hand, I knew quite 
poor men who were incorrigibly hospitable. 

To such men, all honour. The most I dare claim 
for myself is that if I had been rich I should have 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 137 

been better than Corin's master. Even as it was, 
I did my best. But I had no authentic joy in doing 
it. Without the spur of pride I might conceivably 
have not done it at all. There recurs to me from 
among memories of my boyhood an episode that 
is rather significant. In my school, as in most 
others, we received now and again ' hampers ' from 
home. At the mid-day dinner, in every house, 
we all ate together; but at breakfast and supper 
we ate in four or five separate * messes.' It was 
customary for the receiver of a hamper to share the 
contents with his mess-mates. On one occasion I 
received, instead of the usual variegated hamper, 
a box containing twelve sausage-rolls. It happened 
that when this box arrived and was opened by me 
there was no one around. Of sausage-rolls I was 
particularly fond. I am sorry to say that I carried 
the box up to my cubicle, and, having eaten two 
of the sausage-rolls, said nothing to my friends, 
that day, about the other ten, nor anything about 
them when, three days later, I had eaten them all 
— all, up there, alone. 

Thirty years have elapsed, my school-fellows are 
scattered far and wide, the chance that this page 
may meet the eyes of some of them does not much 
dismay me; but I am glad there was no collective 
and contemporary judgment by them on my 
strange exploit. What defence could I have 
offered.'^ Suppose I had said 'You see, I am so 



138 AND EVEN NOW 

essentially a guest,' the plea would have carried 
little weight. And yet it would not have been a 
worthless plea. On receipt of a hamper, a boy did 
rise, always, in the esteem of his mess-mates. 
His sardines, his marmalade, his potted meat, 
at any rate while they lasted, did make us think 
that his parents *must be awfully decent' and 
that he was a not unworthy son. He had become 
our central figure, we expected him to lead the 
conversation, we liked listening to him, his jokes 
were good. With those twelve sausage-rolls I could 
have dominated my fellows for a while. But I had 
not a dominant nature. I never trusted myself 
as a leader. Leading abashed me. I was happiest 
in the comity of the crowd. Having received a 
hamper, I was always glad when it was finished, 
glad to fall back into the ranks. Humility is a 
virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests. 

Boys (as will have been surmised from my record 
of the effect of hampers) are all of them potential 
guests. It is only as they grow up that some of 
them harden into hosts. It is likely enough that if 
I, when I grew up, had been rich, my natural bent 
to guestship would have been diverted, and I too 
have become a (sort of) host. And perhaps I 
should have passed muster. I suppose I did pass 
muster whenever, in the course of my long residence 
in London, I did entertain friends. But the memory 
of those occasions is not dear to me — especially not 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 139 

the memory of those that were in the more dis- 
tinguished restaurants. Somewhere in the back of 
my brain, while I tried to lead the conversation 
brightly, was always the haunting fear that I had 
not brought enough money in my pocket. I never 
let this fear master me. I never said to any one 
*Will you have a liqueur.^' — always *What liqueur 
will you have.^ ' But I postponed as far as possible 
the evil moment of asking for the bill. When I 
had, in the proper casual tone (I hope and believe), 
at length asked for it, I wished always it were not 
brought to me folded on a plate, as though the 
amount were so hideously high that I alone must be 
privy to it. So soon as it was laid beside me, I 
wanted to know the worst at once. But I pretended 
to be so occupied in talk that I was unaware of the 
bill's presence; and I was careful to be always 
in the middle of a sentence when I raised the upper 
fold and took my not (I hope) frozen glance. 
In point of fact, the amount was always much less 
than I had feared. Pessimism does win us great 
happy moments. 

Meals in the restaurants of Soho tested less 
severely the pauper guest masquerading as host. 
But to them one could not ask rich persons — nor 
even poor persons unless one knew them very well. 
Soho is so uncertain that the fare is often not good 
enough to be palmed off on even one's poorest 
and oldest friends. A very magnetic host, with a 



140 AND EVEN NOW 

great gift for bluffing, might, no doubt, even in 
Soho's worst moments, diffuse among his guests a 
conviction that all was of the best. But I never 
was good at bluffing. I had always to let food 
speak for itself. *It's cheap' was the only paean 
that in Soho's bad moments ever occurred to me, 
and this of course I did not utter. And was it so 
cheap, after all? Soho induces a certain optimism. 
A bill there was always larger than I had thought it 
would be. 

Every one, even the richest and most munificent 
of men, pays much by cheque more light-heartedly 
than he pays little in specie. In restaurants I 
should have liked always to give cheques. But in 
any restaurant I was so much more often seen as 
guest than as host that I never felt sure the pro- 
prietor would trust me. Only in my club did I 
know the luxury, or rather the painlessness, of 
entertaining by cheque. A cheque — especially if it 
is a club cheque, as supplied for the use of members, 
not a leaf torn out of his own book — makes so 
little mark on any man's imagination. He dashes 
off some words and figures, he signs his name (with 
that vague momentary pleasure which the sight of 
his own signature anywhere gives him), he walks 
away and forgets. Offering hospitality in my club, 
I was inwardly calm. But even there I did not 
glow (though my face and manner, I hoped, 
glowed) . If my guest was by nature a guest, I man- 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 141 

aged to forget somewhat that I myself was a guest 
by nature. But if, as now and then happened, my 
guest was a true and habitual host, I did feel that 
we were in an absurdly false relation; and it was 
not without diflSculty that I could restrain myself 
from saying to him * This is all very well, you know 
but — frankly: your place is at the head of your 
own table.' 

The host as guest is far, far worse than the guest 
as host. He never even passes muster. The guest, 
in virtue of a certain hability that is part of his 
natural equipment, can more or less ape the ways 
of a host. But the host, with his more positive 
temperament, does not even attempt the graces of 
a guest. By 'graces' I do not mean to imply 
anything artificial. The guest's manners are, 
rather, as wild flowers springing from good rich 
soil — the soil of genuine modesty and gratitude. 
He honourably wishes to please in return for the 
pleasure he is receiving. He wonders that people 
should be so kind to him, and, without knowing it, 
is very kind to them. But the host, as I said earlier 
in this essay, is a guest against his own will. That 
is the root of the mischief. He feels that it is more 
blessed, etc., and that he is conferring rather than 
accepting a favour. He does not adjust himself. 
He forgets his place. He leads the conversation. 
He tries genially to draw you out. He never 
comments on the goodness of the food or wine. 



142 AND EVEN NOW 

He looks at his watch abruptly and says he must be 
off. He doesn't say he has had a delightful time. 
In fact, his place is at the head of his own table. 

His own table, over his own cellar, under his own 
roof — it is only there that you see him at his best. 
To a club or restaurant he may sometimes invite 
you, but not there, not there, my child, do you get 
the full savour of his quality. In life or literature 
there has been no better host than Old Wardle. 
Appalling though he would have been as a guest in 
club or restaurant, it is hardly less painful to think 
of him as a host there. At Dingley Dell, with an 
ample gesture, he made you free of all that was 
his. He could not have given you a club or a 
restaurant. Nor, when you come to think of it, 
did he give you Dingley Dell. The place remained 
his. None knew better than Old Wardle that this 
was so. Hospitality, as we have agreed, is not one 
of the most deep-rooted instincts in man, whereas 
the sense of possession certainly is. Not even Old 
Wardle was a communist. *This,' you may be 
sure he said to himself, 'is my roof, these are my 
horses, that's a picture of my dear old grandfather.' 
And 'This,' he would say to us, 'is my roof: sleep 
soundly under it. These are mi/ horses : ride them. 
That's a portrait of my dear old grandfather : have a 
good look at it.' But he did not ask us to walk off 
with any of these things. Not even what he 
actually did give us would he regard as having 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 143 

passed out of his possession. *That,' he would 
muse if we were torpid after dinner, *is my roast 
beef/ and *That,' if we staggered on the way to 
bed, *is my cold milk punch.' 'But surely,' you 
interrupt me, 'to give and then not feel that one 
has given is the very best of all ways of giving.' 
I agree. I hope you didn't think I was trying to 
disparage Old Wardle. I was merely keeping my 
promise to point out that from among the motives 
of even the best hosts pride and egoism are not 
absent. 

Every virtue, as we were taught in youth, is a 
mean between two extremes; and I think any 
virtue is the better understood by us if we glance 
at the vice on either side of it. I take it that the 
virtue of hospitality stands midway between 
churlishness and mere ostentation. Far to the left 
of the good host stands he who doesn't want to see 
anything of any one; far to the right, he who wants 
a horde of people to be always seeing something 
of him. I conjecture that the figure on the left, 
just discernible through my field-glasses, is that of 
old Corin's master. His name was never revealed 
to us, but Corin's brief account of his character 
suffices. 'Deeds of hospitality' is a dismal phrase 
that could have occurred only to the servant of a 
very dismal master. Not less tell-tale is Corin's 
idea that men who do these 'deeds' do them only 
to save their souls in the next world. It is a pity 



144 AND EVEN NOW 

Shakespeare did not actually bring Corin's master 
on to the stage. One would have liked to see the 
old man genuinely touched by the charming elo- 
quence of Rosalind's appeal for a crust of bread, 
and conscious that he would probably go to heaven 
if he granted it, and yet not quite able to grant it. 
Far away though he stands to the left of the good 
host, he has yet something in common with that 
third person discernible on the right — that speck 
yonder, which I believe to be Lucullus. Nothing 
that we know of Lucullus suggests that he was less 
inhuman than the churl of Arden. It does not 
appear that he had a single friend, nor that he 
wished for one. His lavishness was indiscriminate 
except in that he entertained only the rich. One 
would have liked to dine with him, but not even in 
the act of digestion could one have felt that he had 
a heart. One would have acknowledged that in all 
the material resources of his art he was a master, 
and also that he practised his art for sheer love of it, 
wishing to be admired for nothing but his mastery, 
and cocking no eye on any of those ulterior objects 
but for which some of the most prominent hosts 
would not entertain at all. But the very fact that 
he was an artist is repulsive. When hospitality 
becomes an art it loses its very soul. With this 
reflection I look away from Lucullus and, fixing my 
gaze on the middle ground, am the better able to 
appreciate the excellence of the figure that stands 



HOSTS AND GUESTS 145 

before me — the figure of Old Wardle. Some pride 
and egoism in that capacious breast, yes, but a 
great heart full of kindness, and ever a warm 
spontaneous welcome to the stranger in need, 
and to all old friends and young. Hark! he is 
shouting something. He is asking us both down to 
Dingley Dell. And you have shouted back that 
you will be delighted. Ah, did I not suspect from 
the first that you too were perhaps a guest? 

But I constrain you in the act of rushing off to 
pack your things — one moment: this essay has yet 
to be finished. We have yet to glance at those 
two extremes between which the mean is good 
guestship. Far to the right of the good guest, we 
descry the parasite; far to the left, the churl again. 
Not the same churl, perhaps. We do not know that 
Corin's master was ever sampled as a guest. I am 
inclined to call yonder speck Dante — Dante Ali- 
ghieri, of whom we do know that he received during 
his exile much hospitality from many hosts and 
repaid them by writing how bitter was the bread 
in their houses, and how steep the stairs were. To 
think of dour Dante as a guest is less dispiriting 
only than to think what he would have been as a 
host had it ever occurred to him to entertain 
any one or anything except a deep regard for 
Beatrice; and one turns with positive relief to 
have a glimpse of the parasite — Mr. Smurge, I 
presume, ' whose gratitude was as boundless as his 



146 AND EVEN NOW 

appetite, and his presence as unsought as it ap- 
peared to be inevitable.' But now, how gracious 
and admirable is the central figure — radiating 
gratitude, but not too much of it; never intrusive, 
ever within call; full of dignity, yet all amenable; 
quiet, yet lively; never echoing, ever amplifying; 
never contradicting, but often lighting the way to 
truth; an ornament, an inspiration, anywhere. 

Such is he. But who is he.^^ It is easier to con- 
fess a defect than to claim a quality. I have told 
you that when I lived in London I was nothing as a 
host; but I will not claim to have been a perfect 
guest. Nor indeed was I. I was a good one, but, 
looking back, I see myself not quite in the centre — 
slightly to the left, slightly to the churlish side. 
I was rather too quiet, and I did sometimes con- 
tradict. And, though I always liked to be invited 
anywhere, I very often preferred to stay at home. 
If any one hereafter shall form a collection of the 
notes written by me in reply to invitations, I am 
afraid he will gradually suppose me to have been 
more in request than ever I really was, and to have 
been also a great invalid, and a great traveller. 



A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED BY 
VERY EMINENT MEN 



A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED BY 
VERY EMINENT MEN 

igi8. 

ONE of the things a man best remembers in 
later years is the first time he set eyes on 
some illustrious elder whose achievements 
had already inflamed him to special reverence. 
In almost every autobiography you will find re- 
corded the thrill of that first sight. With the 
thrill, perhaps, there was a slight shock. Great 
men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are 
rather short. No matter to hero-worshipping 
youth. The shock did but swell the thrill. It did 
but enlarge the wonder that this was the man 

himself, the man who 

I was about to say 'who had written those in- 
spired books.' You see, the autobiographists are 
usually people with an innate twist towards writing, 
people whose heroes, therefore, were men of letters ; 
and thus (especially as I myself have that twist) 
I am apt to think of literary hero-worship as 
flourishing more than could any other kind. I 
must try to be less narrow. At first sight of the 
Lord Chancellor, doubtless, unforgettable emotions 

149 



150 AND EVEN NOW 

rise in the breast of a young man who has felt from 
his earliest years the passionate desire to be a 
lawyer. One whose dream it is to excel in trade 
will have been profoundly stirred at finding himself 
face to face with Sir Thomas Lip ton. At least, 
I suppose so. I speak without conviction. I am 
inclined, after all, to think that there is in the 
literary temperament a special sensibility, whereby 
these great first envisagements mean more to it 
than to natures of a more practical kind. So it is 
primarily to men very eminent in literature that I 
venture to offer a hint for making those envisage- 
ments as great as possible. 

The hint will serve only in certain cases. There 
are various ways in which a young man may chance 
to see his hero for the first time. 'One wintry 
afternoon, not long after I came to London,' the 
autobiographist will tell you, * I happened to be in 
Cheyne Walk, bent on I know not what errand, 
when I saw coming slowly along the pavement an 
old grey-bearded man. He wore a hat of the kind 
that was called in those days a "wide-awake," 
and he leaned heavily on a stick which he carried 
in his right hand. I stood reverently aside to let 
him pass — the man who had first taught me to see, 
to feel, to think. Yes, it was Thomas Carlyle; 
and as he went by looking neither to the right nor 
to the left, my heart stood still within me. What 
struck me most in that thought-furrowed face was 



A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED 151 

the eyes. I had never, I have never since, seen a 
pair of eyes which,' etc., etc. This is well enough, 
and I don't say that the writer has exaggerated the 
force of the impression he received. I say merely 
that the impression would have been stronger still 
if he had seen Carlyle in a room. The open air is 
not really a good setting for a hero. It is too diffuse. 
It is too impersonal. Four walls, a ceiling, and a 
floor — these things are needed to concentrate for 
the worshipper the vision vouchsafed. Even if the 
room be a public one — a waiting-room, say, at 
Clapham Junction — it is very helpful. Far more 
so if it be a room in a private house, where, besides 
the vision itself, is thrust on the worshipper the 
dizzy sense of a personal relationship. 

Dip with me, for an example, into some other 
autobiography . . . Here: 'Shortly after I came 
to London' — it is odd that autobiographists never 
are born or bred there — 'one of the houses I found 

open to me was that of Mrs. T , a woman whom 

(so it seemed to me when in later years I studied 
Italian) the word simpatica described exactly, and 
who, as the phrase is, "knew everybody." Call- 
ing on her one Sunday afternoon, I noticed among 
the guests, as I came in, a short, stalwart man with 
a grey beard. "I particularly," my hostess whis- 
pered to me, "want you to know Mr. Robert 
Browning." Everything in the room seemed to 
swim round me, and I had the sensation of literally 



152 AND EVEN NOW 

sinking through the carpet when presently I found 
my hand held for a moment — it was only a moment, 
but it seemed to me an eternity — by the hand that 
had written "Paracelsus." I had a confused im- 
pression of something godlike about the man. His 
brow was magnificent. But the eyes were what 
stood out. Not that they were prominent eyes, 
but they seemed to look you through and through, 
and had a lustre — there is no other word for it — 
which,' I maintain, would have been far less daz- 
zling out in the street, just as the world-sadness of 
Carlyle's eyes would have been twice as harrowing 
in Mrs. T 's drawing-room. 

But even there neither of those pairs of eyes could 
have made its fullest effect. The most terrifically 
gratifying way of seeing one's hero and his eyes 
for the first time is to see them in his own home. 
Anywhere else, believe me, something of his essence 
is forfeit. *The rose of roses' loses more or less 
of its beauty in any vase, and rather more than less 
there in a nosegay of ordinary little blossoms 

(to which I rather rudely liken Mrs. T 's other 

friends). The supreme flower should be first seen 
growing from its own Sharonian soil. 

The worshipper should have, therefore, a letter 
of introduction. Failing that, he should write a 
letter introducing himself — a fervid, an idolatrous 
letter, not without some excuse for the writing of it : 
the hero's seventieth birthday, for instance, or a 



A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED 153 

desire for light on some obscure point in one of his 
earlier works. Heroes are very human, most of 
them; very easily touched by praise. Some of 
them, however, are bad at answering letters. The 
worshipper must not scruple to write repeatedly, 
if need be. Sooner or later he will be summoned 
to the presence. This, perhaps, will entail a 
railway journey. Heroes tend to live a little way 
out of London. So much the better. The ad- 
venture should smack of pilgrimage. Consider 
also that a house in a London street cannot seem so 
signally its owner's own as can a house in a village 
or among fields. The one kind contains him, the 
other enshrines him, breathes of him. The sight 
of it, after a walk (there should be a longish walk) 
from the railway station, strikes great initial chords 
in the worshipper; and the smaller the house, the 
greater the chords. The worshipper pauses at the 
gate of the little front-garden, and when he writes 
his autobiography those chords will be reverberat- 
ing yet. 'Here it was that the greatest of modern 
spirits had lived and wrought. Here in the full- 
ness of years he abode. With I know not what 
tumult of thoughts I passed up the path and rang 
the bell. A bright-faced parlourmaid showed me 
into a room on the ground-floor, and said she would 
tell the master I was here. It was a wonderfully 
simple room; and something, perhaps the writing- 
table, told me it was his work-room, the very room 



154 AND EVEN NOW 

from which, in the teeth of the world's neglect and 
misunderstanding, he had cast his spell over the 
minds of all thinking men and women. When 
I had waited a few minutes, the door opened and' 
after that the deluge of what was felt when the very 
eminent man came in. 

Came in, mark you. That is a vastly important 
point. Had the very eminent man been there at 
the outset, the worshipper's first sight of him would 
have been a very great moment, certainly; but not 
nearly so great as in fact it was. Very eminent 
men should always, on these occasions, come in. 
That is the point I ask them to remember. 

Honourably concerned with large high issues, 
they are not students of personal effect. I must 
therefore explain to them why it is more impressive 
to come into a room than to be found there. 

Let those of them who have been playgoers cast 
their minds back to their experience of theatres. 
Can they recall a single play in which the principal 
actor was 'discovered' sitting or standing on the 
stage when the curtain rose? No. The actor, 
by the very nature of his calling, does, must, study 
personal effect. No playwright would dare to 
dump down his principal actor at the outset of a 
play. No sensible playwright would wish to do so. 
That actor's personality is a part of the play- 
wright's material. Playwriting, it has been well 
said, is an art of preparing. The principal actor 



A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED 155 

is one of the things for which we must be artfully- 
prepared. Note Shakespeare's carefulness in this 
matter. In his day, the stage had no curtain, so 
that even the obscure actor who spoke the first 
lines (Shakespeare himself sometimes, maybe) was 
not ignominiously * discovered.' But an unpre- 
pared entry is no good. The audience must first 
be wrought on, wrought up. Had Shakespeare been 
also Burbage, it is possible that he would have been 
even more painstaking than he was in leading up 
to the leading man. Assuredly, by far the most 
tremendous stage entries I ever saw were those of 
Mr. Wilson Barrett in his later days, the days when 
he had become his own dramatist. I remember 
particularly a first night of his at which I happened 
to be sitting next to a clever but not very successful 
and rather sardonic old actor. I forget just what 
great historic or mythic personage Mr. Barrett was 
to represent, but I know that the earlier scenes of 
the play resounded with rumours of him — accounts 
of the great deeds he had done, and of the yet 
greater deeds that were expected of him. And at 
length there w^as a procession: white-bearded 
priests bearing wands; maidens playing upon the 
sackbut; guards in full armour; a pell-mell of 
unofficial citizens ever prancing along the edge of 
the pageant, huzza-ing and hosanna-ing, mostly 
looking back over their shoulders and shading 
their eyes; maidens strewing rose-leaves; and at 



156 AND EVEN NOW 

last the orchestra crashing to a climax in the nick 
of which my neighbour turned to me and, with 
an assumption of innocent enthusiasm, whispered, 
'I shouldn't wonder if this were Barrett.' I 
suppose (Mr. Barrett at that instant amply ap- 
pearing) I gave way to laughter; but this didn't 
matter; the applause would have drowned a 
thunderstorm, and lasted for several minutes. 

My very eminent reader begins to look un- 
comfortable. Let him take heart. I do not want 
him to tamper with the simplicity of his household 
arrangements. Not even the one bright-faced 
parlourmaid need precede him with strewn petals. 
All the necessary preparation will have been done 
by the bare fact that this is his room, and that he 
will presently appear. *But,' he may say, with a 
toss of his grey beard, *I am not going to practise 
any device whatsoever. I am above devices. 
I shall be in the room when the young man arrives.' 
I assure him that I am not appealing to his vanity, 
merely to his good-nature. Let him remember that 
he too was young once, he too thrilled in harmless 
hero-worship. Let him not grudge the young man 
an utmost emotion. 

Coming into a room that contains a stranger is a 
definite performance, a deed of which one is con- 
scious — if one be young, and if that stranger be 
august. Not to come in awkwardly, not to make a 
bad impression, is here the paramount concern. 



A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED 157 

The mind of the young man as he comes in is 
clogged with thoughts of self. It is free of these 
impediments if he shall have been waiting alone 
in the room. To be come in to is a thing that needs 
no art and induces no embarrassment. One's whole 
attention is focussed on the comer-in. One is the 
mere spectator, the passive and receptive receiver. 
And even supposing that the young man could come 
in under his hero's gaze without a thought of self, 
his first vision would yet lack the right intensity. 
A person found in a room, if it be a room strange 
to the arriver, does not instantly detach himself 
from his surroundings. He is but a feature of the 
scene. He does not stand out as against a back- 
ground, in the grand manner of portraiture, but 
is fused as in an elaborately rendered 'interior.' 
It is all the more essential, therefore, that the 
worshipper shall not have his first sight of hero 
and room simultaneously. The room must, as it 
were, be an anteroom, anon converted into a 
presence-chamber by the hero's entry. And let 
not the hero be in any fear that he will bungle 
his entry. He has but to make it. The effect is 
automatic. He will stand out by merely coming in. 
I would but suggest that he must not, be he never 
so hale and hearty, bounce in. The young man 
must not be startled. If the mountain had come to 
Mahomet, it would, we may be sure, have come 
slowly, that the prophet should have time to realise 



158 AND EVEN NOW 

the grandeur of the miracle. Let the hero re- 
member that his coming, too, will seem super- 
natural to the young man. Let him be framed for 
an instant or so in the doorway — time for his eyes 
to produce their peculiar effect. And by the 
way: if he be a wearer of glasses, he should cer- 
tainly remove these before coming in. He can put 
them on again almost immediately. It is the first 
moment that matters. 

As to how long an interval the hero should let 
elapse between the young man's arrival and his 
own entry, I cannot offer any very exact advice. 
I should say, roughly, that in ten minutes the young 
man would be strung up to the right pitch, and 
that more than twenty minutes would be too much. 
It is important that expectancy shall have worked 
on him to the full, but it is still more important 
that his mood shall not have been chafed to impa- 
tience. The danger of over-long delay is well ex- 
emplified in the sad case of young Coventry Pat- 
more. In his old age Patmore wrote to Mr. Gosse a 
description of a visit he had paid, at the age of 
eighteen, to Leigh Hunt; and you will find the 
letter on page 32, vol. I, of Mr. Basil Champneys* 
biography of him. The circumstances had been 
most propitious. The eager and sensitive spirit of 
the young man, his intense admiration for *The 
Story of Rimini,' the letter of introduction from his 
father to the venerable poet and friend of greater 



A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED 159 

bygone poets, the long walk to Hammersmith, the 
small house in a square there — all was classically 
in order. The poet was at home. The visitor was 
shown in. . . . *I had,' he was destined to tell 
Mr. Gosse, 'waited in the little parlour at least 
two hours, when the door was opened and a most 
picturesque gentleman, with hair flowing nearly or 
quite to his shoulders, a beautiful velvet coat and 
a Vandyck collar of lace about a foot deep, ap- 
peared, rubbing his hands, and smiling ethereally, 
and saying, without a word of preface or notice of 
my having waited so long, "This is a beautiful 
world, Mr. Patmore!" ' The young man was so 
taken aback by these words that they ' eclipsed all 
memory of what occurred during the remainder 
of the visit.' 

Yet there was nothing wrong about the words 
themselves. Indeed, to any one with any sense 
of character and any knowledge of Leigh Hunt, 
they must seem to have been exactly, exquisitely, 
inevitably the right words. But they should have 
been said sooner. 



SERVANTS 



SERVANTS 

1918, 

IT is unseemly that a man should let any an- 
cestors of his arise from their graves to wait 
on his guests at table. The Chinese are a 
polite race, and those of them who have visited 
England, and gone to dine in great English houses, 
will not have made this remark aloud to their 
hosts, I believe it is only their own ancestors 
that they worship, so that they will not have felt 
themselves guilty of impiety in not rising from 
the table and rushing out into the night. Never- 
theless, they must have been shocked. 

The French Revolution, judged according to the 
hope it was made in, must be pronounced a failure: 
it effected no fundamental change in human nature. 
But it was by no means wholly ineffectual. For 
example, ladies and gentlemen ceased to powder 
their hair, because of it; and gentlemen adopted 
simpler costumes. This was so in England as well 
as in France. But in England ladies and gentle- 
men were not so nimble-witted as to be able to 
conceive the possibility of a world without powder. 
Powder had been sent down from heaven, and must 

163 



164 AND EVEN NOW 

not vanish from the face of the earth. Said Sir 
John to his lady, ' 'Tis a matter easy to settle. 
Your maid Deborah and the rest of the wenches 
shall powder their hair henceforth.' Whereat his 
Lady exclaimed in wrath, *Lud, Sir John! Have 
you taken leave of your senses? A parcel of 
Abigails flaunting about the house in powder 
— oh, preposterous ! ' Whereat Sir John exclaimed 
'Zounds!' and hotly demonstrated that since his 
wife had given up powder there could be no harm 
in its assumption by her maids. Whereat his 
Lady screamed and had the vapours and asked 
how he would like to see his own footmen flaunting 
about the house in powder. Whereat he (always 
a reasonable man, despite his hasty temper) went 
out and told his footmen to wear powder hence- 
forth. And in this they obeyed him. And there 
arose a Lord of the Treasury, saying, ' Let powder 
be taxed.' And it was so, and the tax was paid, 
and powder was still worn. And there came the 
great Reform Bill, and the Steam Engine, and all 
manner of queer things, but powder did not end, 
for custom hath many lives. Nor was there an 
end of those things which the Nobility and Gentry 
had long since shed from their own persons — as, 
laced coats and velvet breeches and silk hose; 
forasmuch as without these powder could not aptly 
be. And it came to pass that there was a great 
War. And there was also a Russian Revolution 



SERVANTS 165 

greater than the French one. And it may be that 
everything will be changed, fundamentally and 
soon. Or it may be merely that Sir John will 
say to his Lady, ' My dear, I have decided that the 
footmen shall not wear powder, and not wear 
livery, any more,' and that his Lady will say *0h, 
all right.' Then at length will the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury vanish altogether from the face of the earth. 

Some of the shallower historians would have us 
believe that powder is deleterious to the race of 
footmen. They point out how plenteously footmen 
abounded before 1790, and how steadily their 
numbers have declined ever since. I do not dispute 
the statistics. One knows from the Table Talk of 
Samuel Rogers that Mr. Home Tooke, dining 
tete-a-tete with the first Lord Lansdowne, had 
counted so many as thirty footmen in attendance 
on the meal. That was a high figure — higher 
than in Rogers' day, and higher far, I doubt not, 
than in ours. What I refuse to believe is that the 
wearing of powder has caused among footmen an 
ever-increasing mortality. Powder was forced on 
them by their employers because of the French 
Revolution, but their subsequent fewness is trace- 
able rather to certain ideas forced by that Revolu- 
tion on their employers. The Nobility had begun 
to feel that it had better be just a little less noble 
than heretofore. When the news of the fall of the 
Bastille was brought to him, the first Lord Lans- 



166 AND EVEN NOW 

downe (I conceive) remained for many hours in 
his study, lost in thought, and at length, rising 
from his chair, went out into the hall and discharged 
two footmen. This action may have shortened his 
life, but I believe it to be a fact that when he lay 
dying, some fifteen years later, he said to his heir, 
* Discharge two more.' Such enlightenment and 
adaptability were not to be wondered at in so 
eminent a Whig. As time went on, even in the 
great Tory houses the number of retainers was 
gradually cut down. Came the Industrial Age, 
hailed by all publicists as the Millennium. Looms 
were now tended, and blast-furnaces stoked, by 
middle-aged men who in their youth had done 
nothing but hand salvers, and by young men who 
might have been doing just that if the Bastille 
had been less brittle. Noblemen, becoming less 
and less sure of themselves under the impact of 
successive Reform Bills, wished to be waited on 
by less and less numerous gatherings of footmen. 
And at length, in the course of the great War, any 
Nobleman not young enough to be away fighting 
was waited on by an old butler and a parlour- 
maid or two; and the ceiling did not fall. 

Even if the War shall have taught us nothing 
else, this it will have taught us almost from its very 
outset: to mistrust all prophets, whether of good or 
of evil. Pray stone me if I predict anything at all. 
It may be that the War, and that remarkable by- 



SERVANTS 167 

product, the Russian Revolution, will have so 
worked on the minds of Noblemen that they will 
prefer to have not one footman in their service. 
Or it may be that all those men who might be 
footmen will prefer to earn their livelihood in other 
ways of life. It may even be that no more parlour- 
maids and housemaids, even for very illustrious 
houses, will be forthcoming. I do not profess to 
foresee. Perhaps things will go on just as before. 
But remember: things were going on, even then. 
Suppose that in the social organism generally, 
and in the attitude of servants particularly, the 
decades after the War shall bring but a gradual 
evolution of what was previously afoot. Even on 
this mild supposition must it seem likely that some 
of us will live to look back on domestic service, 
or at least on what we now mean by that term, 
as a curiosity of past days. 

You have to look rather far behind you for the 
time when *the servant question,' as it is called, 
had not yet begun to arise. To find servants 
collectively * knowing their place,' as the phrase 
(not is, but) was, you have to look right back to the 
dawn of Queen Victoria's reign. I am not sure 
whether even then those Georgian notice-boards 
still stood in the London parks to announce that 
* Ladies and Gentlemen are requested, and Servants 
are commanded' not to do this and that. But the 
spirit of those boards did still brood over the 



168 AND EVEN NOW 

land: servants received commands, not requests, 
and were not 'obliging' but obedient. As for the 
tasks set them, I daresay the footmen in the 
great houses had an easy time: they were there 
for ornament; but the (comparatively few) maids 
there, and the maid or two in every home of the 
rapidly-increasing middle class, were very much for 
use, having to do an immense amount of work 
for a wage which would nowadays seem nominal. 
And they did it gladly, with no notion that they 
were giving much for little, or that the likes of 
them had any natural right to a glimpse of liberty 
or to a moment's more leisure than was needed to 
preserve their health for the benefit of their em- 
ployers, or that they were not in duty bound to be 
truly thankful for having a roof over their devoted 
heads. Rare and reprehensible was the maid who, 
having found one roof, hankered after another. 
Improvident, too; for only by long and exclusive 
service could she hope that in her old age she would 
not be cast out on the parish. She might marry 
mean while. f^ The chances were very much against 
that. That was an idea misbeseeming her station 
in life. By the rules of all households, * followers' 
were fended ruthlessly away. Her state was sheer 
slavery .f^ Well, she was not technically a chattel. 
The Law allowed her to escape at any time, after 
giving a month's notice; and she did not work for 
no wages at all, remember. This was hard on her 



SERVANTS 169 

owners? Well, in ancient Rome and elsewhere, 
her employers would have had to pay a large-ish 
sum of money for her, down, to a merchant. 
Economically, her employers had no genuine 
grievance. Her parents had handed her over to 
them, at a tender age, for nothing. There she was; 
and if she was a good girl and gave satisfaction, 
and if she had no gipsy strain, to make her restless 
for the unknown, there she ended her days, not 
without honour from the second or third generation 
of her owners. As in Ancient Rome and elsewhere, 
the system was, in the long run, conducive to 
much good feeling on either side. *Poor Anne 
remained very servile in soul all her days; and was 
altogether occupied, from the age of fifteen to 
seventy-two, in doing other peoples' wills, not her 
own.' Thus wrote Ruskin, in Praeterita, of one 
who had been his nurse, and his father's. Perhaps 
the passage is somewhat marred by its first word. 
But Ruskin had queer views on many subjects. 
Besides, he was very old when, in 1885, he wrote 
Praeterita. Long before that date, moreover, others 
than he had begun to have queer views. The 
halcyon days were over. 

Even in the 'sixties there were many dark and 
cumulose clouds. It was believed, however, that 
these would pass. 'Punch,' our ever-quick inter- 
preter, made light of them. Absurd that Jemima 
Jane should imitate the bonnets of her mistress 



170 AND EVEN NOW 

and secretly aspire to play the piano! 'Punch' 
and his artists, as you will find in his old volumes, 
were very merry about her, and no doubt his 
readers believed that his exquisite ridicule would 
kill, or his sound good sense cure, the malady in her 
soul. Poor misguided girl ! — why was she flying in 
the face of Nature? Nature had decreed that some 
should command, others obey; that some should ( 
sit imperative all day in airy parlours, and others 
be executive in basements. I daresay that among 
the sitters aloft there were many whose indignation 
had a softer side to it. Under the Christian Em- 
perors, Roman ladies were really very sorry for 
their slaves. It is unlikely that no English ladies 
were so in the 'sixties. Pity, after all, is in itself a 
luxury. It is for the 'some' a measure of the gulf 
between themselves and the ' others.' Those others 
had now begun to show signs of restiveness; but 
the gulf was as wide as ever. 

Anthony Trollope was not, like 'Punch,' a mere 
interpreter of what was upmost in the average 
English mind: he was a beautifully patient and 
subtle demonstrator of all that was therein. Read- 
ing him, I soon forget that I am reading about 
fictitious characters and careers; quite soon do 
I feel that I am collating intimate memoirs and 
diaries. For sheer conviction of truth, give me 
Trollope. You, too, if you know him, must often 
have uttered this appeal. Very well. Have you 



SERVANTS 171 

been given 'Orley Farm'? And do you remember 
how Lady Mason felt after confessing to Sir Pere- 
grine Orme that she had forged the will? 'As she 
slowly made her way across the hall, she felt that 
all of evil, all of punishment, had now fallen upon 
her. There are periods in the lives of some of 
us — I trust but of few — when with the silent inner 
voice of suffering' — and here, in justice to Trollope, 
I must interrupt him by saying that he seldom 
writes like this; and I must also, for a reason 
which will soon be plain, ask you not to skip a 
word — ' we call on the mountains to fall and crush 
us, and on the earth to gape open and take us in — 
when with an agony of intensity, we wish our 
mothers had been barren. In these moments the 
poorest and most desolate are objects to us of envy, 
for their sufferings can be as nothing to our own. 
Lady Mason, as she crept silently across the hall, 
saw a servant girl pass down towards the entrance 
to the kitchen, and would have given all, all that 
she had in the world, to change places with that girl. 
But no change was possible to her. Neither would 
the mountains crush her, nor the earth take her in. 
This was her burden, and she must' etc., etc. 

You enjoyed the wondrous bathos .^^ Of course. 
And yet there wasn't any bathos at all, really. 
At least, there wasn't any in 1862, when 'Orley 
Farm' was published. Servants really were 'most 
desolate' in those days, and 'their sufferings' 



172 AND EVEN NOW 

were less acute only than those of gentlewomen 
who had forged wills. This is an exaggerated view? 
Well it was the view held by gentlewomen at large, 
in the 'sixties. Trust TroUope. 

Why to a modern gentlewoman would it seem so 
much more dreadful to be crushed by mountains 
and swallowed by earthquakes than to be a servant 
girl passing down towards the entrance to the 
kitchen? In other words, how is it that servants 
have so much less unpleasant a time than they were 
having half-a-century ago? I should like to think 
this melioration came through our sense of justice, 
but I cannot claim that it did. Somehow, our 
sense of justice never turns in its sleep till long 
after the sense of injustice in others has been 
thoroughly aroused; nor is it ever up and doing 
till those others have begun to make themselves 
thoroughly disagreeable, and not even then will it 
be up and doing more than is urgently required of it' 
by our convenience at the moment. For the 
improvement in their lot, servants must, I am 
afraid, be allowed to thank themselves rather than 
their employers. I am not going to trace the 
stages of that improvement. I will not try to de- 
cide in what your servants passed from wistf ulness 
to resentment, or from resentment to exaction. 
This is not a sociological treatise, it is just an essay; 
and I claim an essayist's privilege of not groping 
through the library of the British Museum on 



SERVANTS 173 

the chance of mastering all the details. I confess 
that I did go there yesterday, thinking I should 
find in Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's 'History of 
Trade Unionism' the means of appearing to know 
much. But I drew blank. It would seem that 
servants have no trade union. This is strange. 
One would not have thought so much could be 
done without organisation. The mere Spirit of the 
Time, sneaking down the steps of areas, has worked 
wonders. There has been no servants' campaign, 
no strategy, nothing but an infinite series of spon- 
taneous and sporadic little risings in isolated house- 
holds. Wonders have been worked, yes. But 
servants are not yet satiated with triumph. More 
and more, on the contrary, do they glide — long 
before the War they had begun gliding — away into 
other forms of employment. Not merely are the 
changed conditions of domestic service not changed 
enough for them: they seem to despise the thing 
itself. It was all very well so long as they had 
not been taught to read and write, but — There, 
no doubt, is the root of the mischief. Had the 
governing classes not forced those accomplishments 
on them in 1872 — But there is no use in repining. 
What's done can't be undone. On the other hand, 
what must be done can't be left undone. House- 
work, for example. What concessions by the 
governing classes, what bribes, will be big enough 
hereafter to get that done.^^ 



174 AND EVEN NOW 

Perhaps the governing classes will do it for them- 
selves, eventually, and their ceilings not fall. 
Or perhaps there will be no more governing classes 
— merely the State and its swarms of neat little 
overseers, male and female. I know not whether 
in this case the sum of human happiness will be 
greater, but it will certainly — it and the sum of 
human dullness — be more evenly distributed. I 
take it that under any scheme of industrial com- 
pulsion for the young a certain number of the 
conscripts would be told off for domestic service. 
To every family in every flat (houses not legal) 
would be assigned one female member of the 
community. She would be twenty years old, 
having just finished her course of general education 
at a municipal college. Three years would be 
her term of industrial (sub-sect, domestic) service. 
Her diet, her costume, her hours of work and lei- 
sure, would be standardised, but the lenses of her 
pince-nez would be in strict accordance to her own 
eyesight. If her employers found her faulty in 
work or conduct, and proved to the visiting in- 
spector that she was so, she would be penalised by 
an additional term of service. If she, on the other 
hand, made good any complaint against her em- 
ployers, she would be transferred to another flat, 
and they be penalised by suspension of their license 
to employ. There would always be chances of 
friction. But these chances would not be so 



SERVANTS 175 

numerous nor so great as they are under that lack 
of system which survives to-day. 

Servants would be persons knowing that for a 
certain period certain tasks were imposed on them, 
tasks tantamount to those in which all their co- 
aevals were simultaneously engaged. To-day they 
are persons not knowing, as who should say, where 
they are, and wishing all the while they were 
elsewhere — and mostly, as I have said, going 
elsewhere. Those who remain grow more and more 
touchy, knowing themselves a mock to the rest; 
and their qualms, even more uncomfortably than 
their demands and defects, are always haunting 
their employers. It seems almost incredible that 
there was a time when Mrs. Smith said 'Sarah, 
your master wishes!' or Mr. Smith said 'Sarah, 
go up and ask your mistress whether — ' I am 
well aware that the very title of this essay jarsr 
I wish I could find another; but in writing one 
must be more explicit than one need be by word 
of mouth. I am well aware that the survival of 
domestic service, in its old form, depends more and 
more on our agreement not to mention it. 

Assuredly, a most uncomfortable state of things. 
Is it, after all, worth saving.? — a form so depleted 
of right human substance, an anomaly so ticklish. 
Consider, in your friend's house, the cheerful smile 
of yonder parlourmaid; hark to the housemaid's 
light brisk tread in the corridor; note well the 



176 AND EVEN NOW 

slight droop of the footman's shoulders as he 
noiselessly draws near. Such things, as being 
traditional, may pander to your sense of the great 
past. Histrionically, too, they are good. But do 
you really like them.^^ Do they not make your 
blood run a trifle cold.^^ In the thick of the 
great past, you would have liked them well enough, 
no doubt. I myself am old enough to have known 
two or three servants of the old school — later 
editions of Ruskin's Anne. With them there was 
no discomfort, for they had no misgiving. They 
had never wished (heaven help them!) for more, 
and in the process of the long years had acquired, 
for inspiration of others, much — a fine mellowness, 
the peculiar sort of dignity, even of wisdom, that 
comes only of staying always in the same place, 
among the same people, doing the same things 
perpetually. Theirs was the sap that rises only 
from deep roots, and where they were you had 
always the sense of standing under great wide 
branches. One especially would I recall, who — 
no, personally I admire the plungingly intimate 
kind of essayist very much indeed, but I never 
was of that kind, and it's too late to begin now. 
For a type of old-world servant I would recall 
rather some more public worthy, such as that 
stout old hostler whom, whenever you went up to 
stay in Hampstead, you would see standing planted 
outside that stout old hostelry. Jack Straw's Castle. 



SERVANTS 177 

He stands there no more, and the hostelry can 
never again be to me all that it was of solid com- 
fort. Or perhaps, as he was so entirely an outside 
figure, I might rather say that Hampstead itself is 
not what it was. His robust but restful form, 
topped with that weather-beaten and chin-bearded 
face, was the hub of the summit of Hampstead. He 
was as richly local as the pond there — that famous 
pond which in hot weather is so much waded 
through by cart-horses and is at all seasons so 
much barked around by excitable dogs and cruised 
on by toy boats. He was as essential as it and the 
flag-staff and the gorse and the view over the valley 
away to Highgate. It was always to Highgate that 
his big blue eyes were looking, and on Highgate 
that he seemed to be ruminating. Not that I 
think he wanted to go there. He was Hampstead- 
born and Hampstead-bred, and very loyal to that 
village. In the course of his life he had ' bin down 
to London a matter o' three or four times,' he 
would tell me, 'an' slep' there once.' He knew me 
to be a native of that city, and, for he was the most 
respectful of men, did not make any adverse 
criticism of it. But clearly it had not prepossessed 
him. Men and — horses rather than cities were 
what he knew. And his memory was more reten- 
tive of horses than of men. But he did — and this 
was a great thrill for me — did, after some pondering 
at my behest, remember to have seen in Heath 



178 AND EVEN NOW 

Street, when he was a boy, *a gen'leman with 
summut long hair, settin' in a small cart, takin' 
a pictur'.' To me Ford Madox Brown's *Work' 
is of all modern pictur's the most delightful in 
composition and strongest in conception, the most 
alive and the most worth-while; and I take great 
pride in having known some one who saw it in the 
making. But my friend himself set little store on 
anything that had befallen him in days before he 
was 'took on as stable-lad at the Castle.' His 
pride was in the Castle, wholly. 

Part of his charm, like Hampstead's, was in the 
surprise one had at finding anything like it so near 
to London. Even now, if you go to districts near 
which no great towns are, you will find here and 
there an inn that has a devoted waiter, a house with 
a fond butler. As to butlers elsewhere, butlers in 
general, there is one thing about them that I do 
not at all understand. It seems to be against 
nature, yet it is a fact, that in the past forty years 
they have been growing younger; and slimmer. 
In my childhood they were old, without exception; 
and stout. At the close of the last century they had 
gradually relapsed into middle age, losing weight 
all the time. And in the years that followed they 
were passing back behind the prime of life, becoming 
willowy juveniles. In 1915, it is true, the work of 
past decades was undone: butlers were suddenly 
as old and stout as ever they were, and so they still 



SERVANTS 179 

are. But this, I take it, is only a temporary set- 
back. At the restoration of peace butlers will 
reappear among us as they were in 1915, and anon 
will be losing height and weight too, till they shall 
have become bright-eyed children, with pattering 
feet. Or will their childhood be of a less gracious 
kind than that? I fear so. I have seen, from 
time to time, butlers who had shed all semblance 
of grace, butlers whose whole demeanour was 
a manifesto of contempt for their calling and of 
devotion to the Spirit of the Age. I have seen a 
butler in a well-established household strolling 
around the diners without the slightest droop, 
and pouring out wine in an off-hand and quite 
obviously hostile manner. I have seen him, to- 
wards the end of the meal, yawning. I remember 
another whom, positively, I heard humming — a 
faint sound indeed, but menacing as the roll of 
tumbrils. 

These were exceptional cases, I grant. For the 
most part, the butlers observed by me have had a 
manner as correctly smooth and colourless as their 
very shirt-fronts. Aye, and in two or three of 
them, modern though they were in date and aspect, 
I could have sworn there was ' a flame of old-world 
fealty all bright.' Were these but the finer come- 
dians? There was one (I will call him Brett) 
w^ho had an almost dog-like way of watching his 
master. Was this but a calculated touch in a 



180 AND EVEN NOW 

merely sesthetic whole? Brett was tall and 
slender, and his movements were those of a grey- 
hound under perfect self-control. Baldness at the 
temples enhanced the solemnity of his thin smooth 
face. It is more than twenty years since first I 
saw him; and for a long period I saw him often, 
both in town and in country. Against the back- 
ground of either house he was impeccable. Many 
butlers might be that. Brett's supremacy was in 
the sense he gave one that he was, after all, human 
— that he had a heart, in which he had taken the 
liberty to reserve a corner for any true friend of his 
master and mistress. I remember well the first 
time he overstepped sheer formality in relation to 
myself. It was one morning in the country, when 
my entertainers and my fellow guests had gone 
out in pursuit of some sport at which I was no good. 
I was in the smoking room, reading a book. Sud- 
denly — no, Brett never appeared anywhere sud- 
denly. Brett appeared, paused at precisely the 
right speaking distance, and said in a low voice, 
* I thought it might interest you to know, sir, that 
there's a white-tailed magpie out on the lawn. 
Very rare, as you know, sir. If you look out of the 
window you will see the little fellow hopping about 
on the lawn.' I thanked him effusively as I darted 
to the window, and simulated an intense interest 
in 'the little fellow.' I greatly overdid my part. 
Exit Brett, having done his to perfection. 



SERVANTS 181 

What worries me is not that I showed so Httle 
self-command and so much insincerity, but the 
doubt whether Brett's flawless technique was the 
vehicle for an act of true good feeling or was used 
simply for the pleasure of using it. Similar doubts 
abide in all my special memories of him. There 
was an evening when he seemed to lose control 
over himself — but did he really lose it? There 
were only four people at dinner : my host, his wife, 
their nephew (a young man famous for drollery), 
and myself. Towards the end of dinner the conver- 
sation had turned on early marriages. *I,' said 
the young man presently, * shall not marry till I 
am seventy. I shall then marry some charming 
girl of seventeen.' His aunt threw up her hands, 
exclaiming, 'Oh, Tom, what a perfectly horrible 
idea! Why, she isn't horn yet!' 'No,' said the 
young man, *but I have my eye on her mother.' 
At this, Brett, who was holding a light for his 
master's cigarette, turned away convulsively, with 
a sudden dip of the head, and vanished from the 
room. His breakdown touched and pleased all four 
beholders. But — was it a genuine lapse.^^ Or merely 
a feint to thrill us? — the feint of an equilibrist so 
secure that he can pretend to lose his balance? 

If I knew why Brett ceased to be butler in that 
household, I might be in less doubt as to the 
true inwardness of him. I knew only that he was 
gone. That was fully ten years ago. Since then I 



182 AND EVEN NOW 

have had one glimpse of him. This was on a 
summer night in London. I had gone out late to 
visit some relatives and assure myself that they 
were safe and sound; for Zeppelins had just passed 
over London for the first time. Not so much 
horror as a very deep disgust was the atmosphere 
in the populous quiet streets and squares. One 
square was less quiet than others, because some- 
body was steadily whistling for a taxi. Anon I saw 
the whistler silhouetted in the light cast out on a 
wide doorstep from an open door, and I saw that 
he was Brett. His attitude, as he bent out into 
the dark night, was perfect in grace, but eloquent 
of a great tensity — even of agony. Behind him 
stood a lady in an elaborate evening cloak. Brett's 
back must have conveyed to her in every curve his 
surprise, his shame, that she should be kept waiting. 
His chivalry in her behalf was such as Burke's for 
Marie Antoinette — little had he dreamed that he 
should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon 
her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men 
of honour, and of cavaliers. He had thought ten 
thousand taxis must have leaped from their stands, 
etc. The whistle that at first sounded merely 
mechanical and ear-piercing had become heart- 
rending and human when I saw from whom it 
proceeded — a very heart-cry that still haunts me. 
But was it a heart-cry? Was Brett, is Brett, more 
than a mere virtuoso? 



SERVANTS 183 

He is in any case what employers call a treasure, 
and to any one who wishes to go forth and hunt 
for him I will supply a chart showing the way 
to that doorstep on which last I saw him. But 
I myself, were I ever so able to pay his wages, 
should never covet him — no, nor anything like him. 
Perhaps we are not afraid of menservants if we look 
out at them from the cradle. None was visible 
from mine. Only in later years and under external 
auspices did I come across any of them. And I 
am as afraid of them as ever. Maidservants 
frighten me less, but they also — except the two 
or three ancients aforesaid — have always struck 
some degree of terror to my soul. The whole notion 
of domestic service has never not seemed to me 
unnatural. I take no credit for enlightenment. 
Not to have the instinct to command implies a lack 
of the instinct to obey. The two aptitudes are 
but different facets of one jewel: the sense of order. 
When I became a schoolboy, I greatly disliked being 
a monitor's fag. Other fags there were who took 
pride in the quality of the toast they made for the 
breakfasts and suppers of their superiors. My 
own feeling was that I would rather eat it myself, 
and that if I mightn't eat it myself I would rather 
it were not very good. Similarly, when I grew to 
have fags of my own, and by morning and by even- 
ing one of them solemnly entered to me bearing a 
plate on which those three traditional pieces of 



184 AND EVEN NOW 

toast were solemnly propped one against another, 
I cared not at all whether the toast were good or 
bad, having no relish for it at best, but could have 
eaten with gusto toast made by my own hand, 
not at all understanding why that member should 
be accounted too august for such employment. 
Even so in my later life Loth to obey, loth to 
command. Convention (for she too frightens me) 
has made me accept what servants would do for 
me by rote. But I would liefer have it ill-done 
than ask even the least mettlesome of them to do 
it better, and far liefer, if they would only be off 
and not do it at all, do it for myself. In Italy — 
dear Italy, where I have lived much — servants do 
still regard service somewhat in the old way, as a 
sort of privilege; so that with Italian servants I 
am comparatively at my ease. But oh, the delight 
when on the afternoon of some local festa there is 
no servant at all in the little house! Oh, the reac- 
tion, the impulse to sing and dance, and the posi- 
tive quick obedience to that impulse! Conven- 
tion alone has forced me to be anywhere a master. 
Ariel and Caliban, had I been Prospero on that 
island, would have had nothing to do and nothing 
to complain of; and Man Friday on that other 
island would have bored me, had I been Crusoe. 
When I was a king in Babylon and you were a 
Christian slave, I promptly freed you. 

Anarchistic? Yes; and I have no defence to 



SERVANTS 185 

offer, except the rather lame one that I am a Tory 
Anarchist. I should like every one to go about 
doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of 
the things to which I have grown accustomed. 
Domestic service is not one of those thmgs, and I 
should be glad were there no more of it. 



GOING OUT FOR A WALK 



GOING OUT FOR A WALK 

1918. 

IT is a fact that not once in all my life have I 
gone out for a walk. I have been taken out 
for walks; but that is another matter. 
Even while I trotted prattling by my nurse's side 
I regretted the good old days when I had, and 
wasn't, a perambulator. When I grew up it seemed 
to me that the one advantage of living in London 
was that nobody ever wanted me to come out for 
a walk. London's very drawbacks — its endless 
noise and bustle, its smoky air, the squalor am- 
bushed everywhere in it — assured this one im- 
munity. Whenever I was with friends in the coun- 
try, I knew that at any moment, unless rain were 
actually falling, some man might suddenly say 
'Come out for a walk!' in that sharp imperative 
tone which he would not dream of using in any other 
connexion. People seem to think there is something 
inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for 
a walk. Any one thus desirous feels that he has a 
right to impose his will on whomever he sees com- 
fortably settled in an arm-chair, reading. It is easy 
to say simply ' No ' to an old friend. In the case of a 

189 



190 AND EVEN NOW 

mere acquaintance one wants some excuse. *I 
wish I could, but' — nothing ever occurs to me 
except 'I have some letters to write.' This formula 
is unsatisfactory in three ways. (1) It isn't be- 
lieved. (2) It compels you to rise from your chair, 
go to the writing-table, and sit improvising a letter 
to somebody until the walkmonger (just not daring 
to call you liar and hypocrite) shall have lumbered 
out of the room. (3) It won't operate on Sunday 
mornings. 'There's no post out till this evening' 
clinches the matter; and you may as well go 
quietly. 

Walking for walking's sake may be as highly 
laudable and exemplary a thing as it is held to be 
by those who practise it. My objection to it is 
that it stops the brain. Many a man has professed 
to me that his brain never works so well as when 
he is swinging along the high road or over hill and 
dale. This boast is not confirmed by my memory 
of anybody who on a Sunday morning has forced 
me to partake of his adventure. Experience 
teaches me that whatever a fellow-guest may have 
of power to instruct or to amuse when he is sitting 
on a chair, or standing on a hearth-rug, quickly 
leaves him when he takes one out for a walk. The 
ideas that came so thick and fast to him in any 
room, where are they now? where that encyclo- 
paedic knowledge which he bore so lightly .^^ where 
the kindling fancy that played like summer light- 



GOING OUT FOR A WALK 191 

ning over any topic that was started? The man's 
face that was so mobile is set now; gone is the 
hght from his fine eyes. He says that A. (our host) 
is a thoroughly good fellow. Fifty yards further 
on, he adds that A. is one of the best fellows he has 
ever met. We tramp another furlong or so, 
and he says that Mrs. A. is a charming woman. 
Presently he adds that she is one of the most 
charming women he has ever known. We pass an 
inn. He reads vapidly aloud to me: *The King's 
Arms. Licensed to sell Ales and Spirits.' I fore- 
see that during the rest of the walk he will read 
aloud any inscription that occurs. We pass a 
milestone. He points at it with his stick, and says 
*Uxminster. 11 Miles.' We turn a sharp corner 
at the foot of a hill. He points at the wall, and 
says * Drive Slowly.' I see far ahead, on the other 
side of the hedge bordering the high road, a small 
notice-board. He sees it too. He keeps his eye 
on it. And in due course 'Trespassers,' he says, 
*Will Be Prosecuted.'- Poor man! — ^mentally a 
wreck. 

Luncheon at the A.s, however, salves him and 
floats him in full sail. Behold him once more the 
life and soul of the party. Surely he will never, 
after the bitter lesson of this morning, go out for 
another walk. An hour later, I see him striding 
forth, with a new companion. I watch him out 
of sight. I know what he is saying. He is saying 



192 AND EVEN NOW 

that I am rather a dull man to go a walk with. He 
will presently add that I am one of the dullest men 
he ever went a walk with. Then he will devote 
himself to reading out the inscriptions. 

How comes it, this immediate deterioration in 
those who go walking for walking's sake.^^ Just 
what happens .f^ I take it that not by his reasoning 
faculties is a man urged to this enterprise. He is 
urged, evidently, by something in him that tran- 
scends reason; by his soul, I presume. Yes, it 
must be the soul that raps out the ' Quick march ! ' 
to the body. — 'Halt! Stand at ease!' interposes 
the brain, and *To what destination,' it suavely 
asks the soul, * and on what errand, are you sending 
the body.f^' — 'On no errand whatsoever,' the soul 
makes answer, 'and to no destination at all. It 
is just like you to be always on the look-out for 
some subtle ulterior motive. The body is going 
out because the mere fact of its doing so is a sure 
indication of nobility, probity, and rugged grandeur 
of character.' — 'Very well, Vagula, have your own 
wayula! But I,' says the brain, 'flatly refuse to 
be mixed up in this tomfoolery. I shall go to sleep 
till it is over.' The brain then wraps itself up in 
its own convolutions, and falls into a dreamless 
slumber from which nothing can rouse it till the 
body has been safely deposited indoors again. 

Even if you go to some definite place, for some 
definite purpose, the brain would rather you took 



GOING OUT FOR A WALK 193 

a vehicle; but it does not make a point of this; 
it will serve you well enough unless you are going 
out for a walk. It won't, while your legs are vying 
with each other, do any deep thinking for you, nor 
even any close thinking; but it will do any number 
of small odd jobs for you willingly — provided that 
your legs, also, are making themselves useful, not 
merely bandying you about to gratify the pride of 
the soul. Such as it is, this essay was composed 
in the course of a walk, this morning. I am not 
one of those extremists who must have a vehicle 
to every destination. I never go out of my way, 
as it were, to avoid exercise. I take it as it comes, 
and take it in good part. That valetudinarians are 
always chattering about it, and indulging in it to 
excess, is no reason for despising it. I am inclined 
to think that in moderation it is rather good for 
one, physically. But, pending a time when no 
people wish me to go and see them, and I have no 
wish to go and see any one, and there is nothing 
whatever for me to do off my own premises, I never 
will go out for a walk. 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 

1918. 

1HAVE often wondered that no one has set 
himself to collect unfinished works of art. 
There is a peculiar charm for all of us in that 
which was still in the making when its maker 
died, or in that which he laid aside because he was 
tired of it, or didn't see his way to the end of it, 
or wanted to go on to something else. Mr. Pickwick 
and the Ancient Mariner are valued friends of ours, 
but they do not preoccupy us like Edwin Drood or 
Kubla Khan. Had that revolving chair at Gad's 
Hill become empty but a few weeks later than it 
actually did, or had Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 
act of setting down his dream about the Eastern 
potentate not been interrupted by 'a person on 
business from Porlock' and so lost the thread of 
the thing for ever, from two what delightful glades 
for roaming in would our fancy be excluded ! The 
very globe we live on is a far more fascinating sphere 
than it can have been when men supposed that 
men like themselves would be on it to the end of 
time. It is only since we heard what Darwin had 
to say, only since we have had to accept as im- 
provisible what lies far ahead, that the Book of 

197 



198 AND EVEN NOW 

Life has taken so strong a hold on us and 'once 
taken up, cannot,' as the reviewers say, * readily 
be laid down.' The work doesn't strike us as a 
masterpiece yet, certainly; but who knows that it 
isn't — that it won't be, judged as a whole? 

For sheer creativeness, no human artist, I take 
it, has a higher repute than Michael Angelo; none 
perhaps has a repute so high. But what if Michael 
Angelo had been a little more persevering.'^ All 
those years he spent in the process of just a-going 
to begin Pope Julius' tomb, and again, all those 
blank spaces for his pictures and bare pedestals for 
his statues in the Baptistery of San Lorenzo — ought 
we to regret them quite so passionately as we do? 
His patrons were apt to think him an impossible 
person to deal with. But I suspect that there may 
have been a certain high cunning in what appeared 
to be a mere lovable fault of temperament. When 
Michael Angelo actually did bring a thing off, the 
result was not always more than magnificent. His 
David is magnificent, but it isn't David. One is 
duly awed, but, to see the master at his best, back 
one goes from the Accademia to that marvellous 
bleak Baptistery which he left that we should see, 
in the mind's eye, just that very best. 

It was there, some years ago, as I stood before 
the half-done marvel of the Night and Morning, 
that I first conceived the idea of a museum of 
incomplete masterpieces. And now I mean to 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 199 

organise the thing on my own account. The Bap- 
tistery itself, so full of unf ulfilment, and with such 
a wealth, at present, of spare space, will be the 
ideal setting for my treasures. There be it that 
the public shall throng to steep itself in the 
splendour of possibilities, beholding, under glass, 
and perhaps in excellent preservation, Penelope's 
web and the original designs for the Tower of 
Babel, the draft made by Mr. Asquith for a re- 
formed House of Lords and the notes jotted down 
by the sometime German Emperor for a proclama- 
tion from Versailles to the citizens of Paris. There 
too shall be the MS. of that fragmentary * Iphig^nie' 
which Racine laid aside so meekly at the behest 
of Mile, de Treves — 'quoique celafut de mon mieux'; 
and there an early score of that one unfinished 
Symphony of Beethoven's — I forget the number of 
it, but anyhow it is my favourite. Among the 
pictures, Rossetti's oil-painting of * Found' must 
be ruled out, because we know by more than one 
drawing just what it would have been, and how 
much less good than those drawings. But Leo- 
nardo's St. Sebastian (even if it isn't Leonardo's) 
shall be there, and Whistler's Miss Connie Gilchrist, 
and numerous other pictures that I would mention 
if my mind were not so full of one picture to which, 
if I can find it and acquire it, a special place of 
honour shall be given: a certain huge picture in 
which a life-sized gentleman, draped in a white 



200 AND EVEN NOW 

mantle, sits on a fallen obelisk and surveys the 
ruined temples of the Campagna Romana. 

The reader knits his brow? Evidently he has 
not just been reading Goethe's 'Travels in Italy.' 
I have. Or rather, I have just been reading a 
translation of it, published in 1885 by George Bell 
& Sons. I daresay it isn't a very good translation 
(for one has always understood that Goethe, de- 
spite a resistant medium, wrote well — an accom- 
plishment which this translator hardly wins one to 
suspect). And I daresay the painting I so want 
to see and have isn't a very good painting. Wil- 
helm Tischbein is hardly a name to conjure with, 
though in his day, as a practitioner in the 'his- 
torical ' style, and as a rapturous resident in Rome, 
Tischbein did great things; big things, at any rate. 
He did crowds of heroes in helmets looked down 
at by gods on clouds; he did centaurs leaping 
ravines; Sabine women; sieges of Troy. And he 
did this portrait of Goethe. At least he began it. 
Why didn't he finish it? That is a problem as to 
which one can but hazard guesses, reading between 
the lines of Goethe's letters. The great point is 
that it never was finished. By that point, as you 
read between those lines, you will be amused if 
you are unkind, and worried if you are humane. 

Worried, yet also pleased. Goethe has more 
than once been described as 'the perfect man.' 
He was assuredly a personage on the great scale. 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 201 

in the grand manner, gloriously balanced, rounded. 
And it is a fact that he was not made of marble. 
He started with all the disadvantages of flesh and 
blood, and retained them to the last. Yet from 
no angle, as he went his long way, could it be 
plausibly hinted that he wasn't sublime. Endear- 
ing though failure always is, we grudge no man a 
moderately successful career, and glory itself we 
will wink at if it befall some thoroughly good 
fellow. But a man whose career was glorious with- 
out intermission, decade after decade, does sorely 
try our patience. He, we know, cannot have been 
a thoroughly good fellow. Of Goethe we are shy 
for such reasons as that he was never injudicious, 
never lazy, always in his best form — and always in 
love with some lady or another just so much as 
was good for the development of his soul and his 
art, but never more than that by a tittle. Fate 
decreed that Sir Willoughby Patterne should cut 
a ridiculous figure and so earn our forgiveness. 
Fate may have had a similar plan for Goethe; if 
so, it went all agley. Yet, in the course of that 
pageant, his career, there did happen just one 
humiliation — one thing that needed to be hushed 
up. There Tischbein's defalcation was; a chip in 
the marble, a flaw in the crystal, just one thread 
loose in the great grand tapestry. 

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. 
Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial 



202 AND EVEN NOW 

instinct by which you and I size people up. Had 
you and I been at Goethe's elbow when, in the 
October of 1786, he entered Rome and was received 
by the excited Tischbein, no doubt we should have 
whispered in his ear, * Beware of that man? He 
will one day fail you.' Unassisted Goethe had no 
misgivings. For some years he had been receiving 
letters from this Herr Tischbein. They were the 
letters of a man steeped in the Sorrows of Werther 
and in all else that Goethe had written. This was 
a matter of course. But also they were the letters 
of a man familiar with all the treasures of Rome. 
All Italy was desirable; but it was especially 
towards great Rome that the soul of the illustrious 
poet, the confined State Councillor of Weimar, had 
been ever yearning. So that when came the longed- 
for day, and the Duke gave leave of absence, and 
Goethe, closing his official portfolio with a snap 
and imprinting a fervent but hasty kiss on the hand 
of Frau von Stein, fared forth on his pilgrimage, 
Tischbein was a prospect inseparably bound up for 
him with that of the Seven Hills. Baedeker had 
not been born. Tischbein would be a great saviour 
of time and trouble. Nor was this hope unfulfilled. 
Tischbein was assiduous, enthusiastic, indefati- 
gable. In the early letters to Frau von Stein, to 
Herder and others, his name is always cropping up 
for commendation. 'Of Tischbein I have much to 
say and much to boast' — *A thorough and original 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 203 

German' — *He has always been thinking of me, 
ever providing for my wants' — 'In his society all 
my enjoyments are more than doubled.' He was 
thirty-five years old (two years younger than 
Goethe), and one guesses him to have been a stocky 
little man, with those short thick legs which denote 
indefatigability. One guesses him blond and rosy, 
very voluble, very guttural, with a wealth of force- 
ful but not graceful gesture . 

One is on safer ground in guessing him vastly 
proud of trotting Goethe round. Such fame 
throughout Europe had Goethe won by his works 
that it was necessary for him to travel incognito. 
Not that his identity wasn't an open secret, nor 
that he himself would have wished it hid. Great 
artists are always vain. To say that a man is 
vain means merely that he is pleased with the 
effect he produces on other people. A conceited 
man is satisfied with the effect he produces on 
himself. Any great artist is far too perceptive 
and too exigent to be satisfied with that effect, 
and hence in vanity he seeks solace. Goethe, you 
may be sure, enjoyed the hero- worshipful gaze 
focussed on him from all the tables of the Gaffe 
Greco. But not for adulation had he come to 
Rome. Rome was what he had come for; and 
the fussers of the coteries must not pester him in 
his golden preoccupation with the antique world. 
Tischbein was very useful in warding off the profane 



204 AND EVEN NOW 

throng — fanning away the flies. Let us hope he 
was actuated solely by zeal in Goethe's interest, 
not by the desire to swagger as a monopolist. 

Clear it is, though, that he scented fine oppor- 
tunities in Goethe's relation to him. Suppose he 
could rope his illustrious friend in as a collaborator! 
He had begun a series of paintings on the theme 
of primaeval man. Goethe was much impressed 
by these. Tischbein suggested a great poem on 
the theme of primaeval man — a volume of engrav- 
ings after Tischbein, with running poetic commen- 
tary by Goethe. ' Indeed, the frontispiece for such 
a joint work,' writes Goethe in one of his letters, 
*is already designed.' Pushful Tischbein! But 
Goethe, though he was the most courteous of men, 
was not of the stuff of which collaborators are 
made. * During our walks together' — and can 
you not see those two together, pacing up and 
down the groves of the Villa Pamphili, or around 
the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter.^ — little Tisch- 
bein gesticulating and peering up into Goethe's 
face, and Goethe with his hands clasped behind 
ever nodding in a non-committal manner — 'he has 
talked with me in the hope of gaining me over to 
his views, and getting me to enter upon the plan.' 
Goethe admits in another letter that 'the idea is 
beautiful; only,' he adds, 'the artist and the poet 
must be many years together, in order to carry 
out and execute such a work'; and one conceives 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 205 

that he felt a certain lack of beauty in the idea of 
being with Tischbein for many years. 'Did I not 
fear to enter upon any new tasks at present, I 
might perhaps be tempted.' This I take to be but 
the repetition of a formula often used in the course 
of those walks. In no letter later than November 
is the scheme mentioned. Tischbein had evidently 
ceased to press it. Anon he fell back on a scheme 
less glorious but likelier to bear fruit. 

* Latterly,' writes Goethe, *I have observed 
Tischbein regarding me; and now' — note the 
demure pride! — 'it appears that he has long cher- 
ished the idea of painting my portrait.' Earnest 
sight-seer though he was, and hard at work on va- 
rious MSS. in the intervals of sight-seeing, it is evi- 
dent that to sit for his portrait was a new task 
which he did not 'fear to enter upon at present.' 
Nor need we be surprised. It seems to be a law of 
nature that no man, unless he has some obvious 
physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his por- 
trait. A man may be old, he may be ugly, he may 
be burdened with grave responsibilities to the na- 
tion, and that nation be at a crisis of its history; 
but none of these considerations, nor all of them to- 
gether, will deter him from sitting for his portrait. 
Depend on him to arrive at the studio punctually, 
to surrender himself and sit as still as a mouse, try- 
ing to look his best in whatever posture the painter 
shall have selected as characteristic, and talking 



206 AND EVEN NOW 

(if he have leave to talk) with a touching humility 
and with a keen sense of his privilege in being 
allowed to pick up a few ideas about art. To a 
dentist or a hairdresser he surrenders himself with- 
out enthusiasm, even with resentment. But in the 
atmosphere of a studio there is something that 
entrances him. Perhaps it is the smell of turpen- 
tine that goes to his head. Or more likely it is 
the idea of immortality. Goethe was one of the 
handsomest men of his day, and (remember) vain, 
and now in the prime of life; so that he was 
specially susceptible to the notion of being im- 
mortalised. *The design is already settled, and 
the canvas stretched'; and I have no doubt that 
in the original German these words ring like the 
opening of a ballad. *The anchor's up and the 
sail is spread,' as I (and you, belike) recited in 
childhood. The ship in that poem foundered, if I 
remember rightly; so that the analogy to Goethe's 
words is all the more striking. 

It is in this same letter that the poet mentions 
those three great points which I have already laid 
before you: the fallen obelisk for him to sit on, 
the white mantle to drape him, and the ruined 
temples for him to look at. 'It will form a beauti- 
ful piece, but,' he sadly calculates, *it will be rather 
too big for our northern habitations.' Courage! 
There will be plenty of room for it in the Baptistery 
of San Lorenzo. 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 207 

Meanwhile, the work progressed. A brief visit 
to Naples and Sicily was part of Goethe's well- 
pondered campaign, and he was to set forth from 
Rome (taking Tischbein with him) immediately 
after the close of the Carnival — but not a moment 
before. Needless to say, he had no idea of flinging 
himself into the Carnival, after the fashion of lesser 
and lighter tourists. But the Carnival was a great 
phenomenon to be studied. All-embracing Goethe, 
remember, was nearly as keen on science as on art. 
He had ever been patient in poring over plants 
botanically, and fishes ichthyologically, and min- 
erals mineralogically. And now, day by day, he 
studied the Carnival from a strictly carnivalogical 
standpoint, taking notes on which he founded 
later a classic treatise. His presence was not needed 
in the studio during these days, for the life-sized 
portrait 'begins already to stand out from the 
canvas,' and Tischbein was now painting the folds 
of the mantle, which were swathed around a clay 
figure. 'He is working away diligently, for the 
work must, he says, be brought to a certain point 
before we start for Naples.' Besides the mantle, 
Tischbein was doing the Campagna. I remember 
that some years ago an acquaintance of mine, a 
painter who was neither successful nor talented, 
but always buoyant, told me he was starting for 
Italy next day. 'I am going,' he said, 'to paint 
the Campagna. The Campagna wants painting.' 



208 AND EVEN NOW 

Tischbein was evidently giving it a good dose of 
what it wanted. 'It takes no little time,' writes 
Goethe to Frau von Stein, 'merely to cover so 
large a field of canvas with colours.' 

Ash Wednesday ushered itself in, and ushered 
the Carnival out. The curtain falls, rising a few 
days later on the Bay of Naples. Re-enter Goethe 
and Tischbein. Bright blue back-cloth. Inci- 
dental music of barcaroles, etc. For a while, all 
goes splendidly well. Sane Quixote and aesthetic 
Sancho visit the churches, the museums; visit 
Pompeii; visit our Ambassador, Sir William Hamil- 
ton, that accomplished man. Vesuvius is visited 
too ; thrice by Goethe, but (here, for the first time 
we feel a vague uneasiness) only once by Tischbein. 
To Goethe, as you may well imagine, Vesuvius was 
strongly attractive. At his every ascent he was 
very brave, going as near as possible to the crater, 
which he approached very much as he had ap- 
proached the Carnival, not with any wish to fling 
himseK into it, but as a resolute scientific inquirer. 
Tischbein, on the other hand, merely disliked and 
feared Vesuvius. He said it had no aesthetic value, 
and at his one ascent did not accompany Goethe 
to the crater's edge. He seems to have regarded 
Goethe's bravery as rashness. Here, you see, is a 
rift, ever so slight, but of evil omen; what seis- 
mologists call 'a fault.' 

Goethe was unconscious of its warning. Through- 
out his sojourn in Naples he seems to have thought 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 209 

that Tischbein in Naples was the same as Tischbein 
in Rome. Of some persons it is true that change 
of sky works no change of soul. Oddly enough, 
Goethe reckoned himself among the changeable. 
In one of his letters he calls himself 'quite an 
altered man,' and asserts that he is given over to 
*a sort of intoxicated self-f orgetf ulness ' — a condi- 
tion to which his letters testify not at all. In a 
later bulletin he is nearer the mark: 'Were I not 
impelled by the German spirit, and desire to learn 
and do rather than to enjoy, I should tarry a little 
longer in this school of a light-hearted and happy 
life, and try to profit by it still more.' A truly 
priceless passage, this, with a solemnity transcend- 
ing logic — as who should say, 'Were I not so 
thoroughly German, I should be thoroughly Ger- 
man.' Tischbein was of less stern stuff, and it is 
clear that Naples fostered in him a lightness which 
Rome had repressed. Goethe says that he himself 
puzzled the people in Neapolitan society: 'Tisch- 
bein pleases them far better. This evening he 
hastily painted some heads of the size of life, and 
about these they disported themselves as strangely 
as the New Zealanders at the sight of a ship of 
war.' One feels that but for Goethe's presence 
Tischbein would have cut New Zealand capers too. 
A week later he did an utterly astounding thing. 
He told Goethe that he would not be accompanying 
him to Sicily. 

He did not, of course, say 'The novelty of your 



210 AND EVEN NOW 

greatness has worn off. Your solemnity oppresses 
me. Be off, and leave me to enjoy myself in 
Naples-on-Sea — Naples, the Queen of Watering 
places!' He spoke of work which he had under- 
taken, and recommended as travelling companion 
for Goethe a young man of the name of Kneip. 

Goethe, we may be sure, was restrained by pride 
from any show of wrath. Pride compelled him to 
make light of the matter in his epistles to the 
Weimarians. Even Kniep he accepted with a good 
grace, though not without misgivings. He needed 
a man who would execute for him sketches and 
paintings of all that in the districts passed through 
was worthy of record. He had already 'heard 
Kneip highly spoken of as a clever draughtsman — 
only his industry was not much commended.' Our 
hearts sink. 'I have tolerably studied his cha- 
racter, and think the ground of this censure arises 
rather from a want of decision, which may certainly 
be overcome, if we are long together.' Our hearts 
sink lower. Kjiiep will never do. Kiiiep will play 
the deuce, we are sure of it. And yet (such is 
life) Kniep turns out very well. Throughout the 
Sicilian tour Goethe gives the rosiest reports of 
the young man's cheerful ways and strict attention 
to the business of sketching. It may be that these 
reports were coloured partly by a desire to set 
Tischbein down. But there seems to be no doubt 
that Goethe liked Kniep greatly and rejoiced in 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 211 

the quantity and quality of his work. At Palermo, 
one evening, Goethe sat reading Homer and * mak- 
ing an impromptu translation for the benefit of 
Kniep, who had well deserved by his diligent exer- 
tions this day some agreeable refreshment over a 
glass of wine.' This is a pleasing little scene, and 
is typical of the whole tour. 

In the middle of May, Goethe returned to Naples. 
And lo! — Tischbein was not there to receive him. 
Tischbein, if you please, had skipped back to Rome, 
bidding his Neapolitan friends look to his great 
compatriot. Pride again forbade Goethe to show 
displeasure, and again our reading has to be done 
between the lines. In the first week of June he 
was once more in Rome. I can imagine with what 
high courtesy, as though there were nothing to 
rebuke, he treated Tischbein. But it is possible 
that his manner would have been less perfect had 
the portrait not been unfinished. 

His sittings were resumed. It seems that Signora 
Zucchi, better known to the world as Angelica 
Kauffmann, had also begun to paint him. But, 
great as was Goethe's esteem for the mind of that 
nice woman, he set no store on this fluttering 
attempt of hers: 'her picture is a pretty fellow, 
to be sure, but not a trace of me.' It was by the 
large and firm * historic' mode of Tischbein that 
he, not exactly in his habit as he lived, but in the 
white mantle that so well became him, and on the 



212 AND EVEN NOW 

worthy throne of that fallen obelisk, was to be 
handed down to the gaze of future ages. Was to 
be, yes. On June 27th he reports that Tischbein's 
work *is succeeding happily; the likeness is strik- 
ing, and the conception pleases everybody.' Three 
days later: 'Tischbein goes to Naples.' 

Incredible ! We stare aghast, as in the presence 
of some great dignitary from behind whom, by a 
ribald hand, a chair is withdrawn when he is in 
the act of sitting down. Tischbein had, as it were, 
withdrawn the obelisk. What was Goethe to do.^^ 
What can a dignitary, in such case, do.^^ He cannot 
turn and recriminate. That would but lower him 
the more. Can he behave as though nothing has 
happened .f^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe tried 
to do so. And it must have been in support of 
this attempt that he consented to leave his own 
quarters and reside awhile in the studio of the 
outgoing Tischbein. That slippery man does, it is 
true, seem to have given out that he would not 
be away very long; and the prospect of his return 
may well have been reckoned in mitigation of his 
going. Goethe had leave from the Duke of Weimar 
to prolong his Italian holiday till the spring of 
next year. It is possible that Tischbein really did 
mean to come back and finish the picture. Goethe 
had, at any rate, no reason for not hoping. 

'When you think of me, think of me as happy,' 
he directs. And had he not indeed reasons for 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 213 

happiness? He had the most perfect health, he 
was writing masterpieces, he was in Rome — Rome 
which no pilgrim had loved with a rapture deeper 
than his; the wonderful old Rome that lingered 
on almost to our own day, under the conserving 
shadow of the Temporal Power; a Rome in which 
the Emperors kept unquestionably their fallen day 
about them. No pilgrim had wandered with a 
richer enthusiasm along those highways and those 
great storied spaces. It is pleasing to watch in 
what deep draughts Goethe drank Rome in. But 
— but — I fancy that now in his second year of so- 
journ he tended to remain within the city walls, 
caring less than of yore for the Campagna; and I 
suspect that if ever he did stray out there he averted 
his eyes from anything in the nature of a ruined 
temple. Of one thing I am sure. The huge canvas 
in the studio had its face to the wall. There is never 
a reference to it by Goethe in any letter after that 
of June 27. But I surmise that its nearness con- 
tinually worked on him, and that sometimes, when 
no one was by, he all unwillingly approached it, 
he moved it out into a good light and, stepping 
back, gazed at it for a long time. And I wonder 
that Tischbein was not shamed, telepathically, to 
return. 

What was it that had made Tischbein — ^not once, 
but thrice — abandon Goethe.? We have no right 
to suppose he had plotted to avenge himself for 



214 AND EVEN NOW 

the poet's refusal to collaborate with him on the 
theme of primaeval man. A likelier explanation is 
merely that Goethe, as I have suggested, irked 
him. Forty years elapsed before Goethe collected 
his letters from Italy and made a book of them; 
and in this book he included — how magnanimous 
old men are! — several letters written to him from 
Naples by his deserter. These are shallow but 
vivid documents — the effusions of one for whom 
the visible world suffices. I take it that Tischbein 
was an 'historic' painter because no ambitious 
painter in those days wasn't. In Goethe the his- 
toric sense was as innate as the aesthetic; so was 
the ethical sense; so was the scientific sense; and 
the three of them, forever cropping up in his dis- 
course, may well be understood to have been too 
much for the simple Tischbein. But, you ask, can 
mere boredom make a man act so cruelly as this 
man acted .^ Well, there may have been another 
cause, and a more interesting one. I have men- 
tioned that Goethe and Tischbein visited our 
Ambassador in Naples. His Excellency was at 
that time a widower, but his establishment was 
already graced by his future wife. Miss Emma 
Harte, whose beauty is so well known to us all. 
* Tischbein,' wrote Goethe a few days afterwards, 
*is engaged in painting her.' Later in the year, 
Tischbein, soon after his return to Naples, sent to 
Goethe a sketch for a painting he had now done 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 215 

of Miss Harte as Iphigenia at the Sacrificial Altar. 
Perhaps he had wondered that she should sacrifice 
herself to Sir William Hamilton. ... * I like Ham- 
ilton uncommonly' is a phrase culled from one of 
his letters; and when a man is very hearty about 
the protector of a very beautiful woman one begins 
to be suspicious. I do not mean to suggest that 
Miss Harte — though it is true she had not yet met 
Nelson — was fascinated by Tischbein. But we 
have no reason to suppose that Tischbein was less 
susceptible than Romney. 

Altogether, it seems likely enough that the future 
Lady Hamilton's fine eyes were Tischbein's main 
reason for not going to Sicily, and afterwards for 
his sudden exodus from Rome. But why, in this 
case, did he leave Naples, why go back to Rome, 
when Goethe was in Sicily .f^ I hope he went for 
the purpose of shaking off his infatuation for Miss 
Harte. I am loth to think he went merely to wind 
up his affairs in Rome. I will assume that only 
after a sharp conflict, in which he fought hard on 
the side of duty against love, did he relapse to 
Naples. But I won't pretend to wish he had 
finished that portrait. 

If you know where that portrait is, tell me. I 
want it. I have tried to trace it — vainly. What 
became of it.^ I thought I might find this out 
in George Henry Lewes' *Life of Goethe.' But 
Lewes had a hero-worship for Goethe; he thought 



216 AND EVEN NOW 

him greater than George EHot, and in the whole 
book there is but one cold mention of Tischbein's 
name. Mr. Oscar Browning, in the ' Encyclopaedia 
Britannica,' names Tischbein as Goethe's 'constant 
companion' in the early days at Rome — and says 
nothing else about him! In fact, the hero- worship- 
pers have evidently conspired to hush up the 
affront to their hero. Even the 'Penny Cyclo- 
poedia' (1842), which devotes a column to little 
Tischbein himself, and goes into various details of 
his career, is silent about the portrait of Goethe. I 
learn from that column that Tischbein became 
director of the Neapolitan Academy, at a salary of 
600 ducats, and resided in Naples until the Revolu- 
tion of '99, when he returned in haste to Germany. 
Suppose he passed through Rome on his way. A 
homing fugitive would not pause to burden himself 
with a vast unfinished canvas. We may be sure 
the canvas remained in that Roman studio — an ob- 
ject of mild interest to successive occupants. Is it 
there still .f^ Does the studio itself still exist .^^ Belike 
it has been demolished, with so much else. What 
became of the expropriated canvas .f^ It wouldn't 
have been buried in the new foundations. Some 
one must have staggered away with it. Whither? 
Somewhere, I am sure, in some dark vault or 
cellar, it languishes. 

Seek it, fetch it out, bring it to me in triumph. 
You will always find me in the Baptistery of San 



QUIA IMPERFECTUM 217 

Lorenzo. But I have formed so clear and sharp 
a preconception of the portrait that I am likely 
to^be disappointed at sight of what you bring me. 
I see in my mind's eye every falling fold of the 
white mantle; the nobly-rounded calf of the leg 
on which rests the forearm; the high-light on the 
black silk stocking. The shoes, the hands, are 
rather sketchy, the sky is a mere slab; the ruined 
temples are no more than adumbrated. But the 
expression of the face is perfectly, epitomically, 
that of a great man surveying a great alien scene 
and gauging its import not without a keen sense of 
its dramatic conjunction with himself— Marius 
on Carthage and Napoleon before the Sphinx, 
Wordsworth on London Bridge and Cortes on the 
peak in Darien, but most of all, certainly, Goethe 
in the Campagna. So., you see, I cannot promise 
not to be horribly let down by Tischbein's actual 
handiwork. I may even have to take back my 
promise that it shall have a place of honour. But 
I shall not utterly reject it— unless on the plea that 
a collection of unfinished works should itself have 
some great touch of inco»mpletion. 



SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE 



SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE 

July, igig. 

THE cottage had a good trim garden in front 
of it, and another behind it. I might not 
have noticed it at all but for them and 
their emerald greenness. Yet itself (I saw when I 
studied it) was worthy of them. Sussex is rich in 
fine Jacobean cottages; and their example, clearly, 
had not been lost on the builder of this one. Its 
proportions had a homely grandeur. It was long 
and wide and low. It was quite a yard long. It 
had three admirable gables. It had a substantial 
and shapely chimney-stack. I liked the look that 
it had of honest solidity all over, nothing anywhere 
scamped in the workmanship of it. It looked as 
though it had been built for all time. But this was 
not so. For it was built on sand, and of sand; and 
the tide was coming in. 

Here and there in its vicinity stood other build- 
ings. None of these possessed any points of 
interest. They were just old-fashioned 'castles,' 
of the bald and hasty kind which I myself used 
to make in childhood and could make even now — 
conic affairs, with or without untidily-dug moats, 

221 



222 AND EVEN NOW 

the nullities of convention and of unskilled labour. 
When I was a child the charm of a castle was not 
in the building of it, but in jumping over it when 
it was built. Nor was this an enduring charm. 
After a few jumps one abandoned one's castle and 
asked one's nurse for a bun, or picked a quarrel 
with some child even smaller than oneself, or went 
paddling. As it was, so it is. My survey of the 
sands this morning showed me that forty years had 
made no difference. Here was plenty of anima- 
tion, plenty of scurrying and gambolling, of 
laughter and tears. But the actual spadew^ork 
was a mere empty form. For all but the builder 
of that cottage. For him, manifestly, a passion, 
a rite. 

He stood, spade in hand, contemplating, from 
one angle and another, what he had done. He was 
perhaps nine years old; if so, small for his age. 
He had very thin legs in very short grey knicker- 
bockers, a pale freckled face, and hair that matched 
the sand. He was not remarkable. But with a 
little good-will one can always find something im- 
pressive in anybody. When Mr. Mallaby-Deeley 
won a wide and very sudden fame in connexion with 
Covent Garden, an awe-stricken reporter wrote of 
him for The Daily Mail, *he has the eyes of a 
dreamer.' I believe that Mr. Cecil Rhodes really 
had. So, it seemed to me, had this little boy. 
They were pale grey eyes, rather prominent^ with 



SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE 223 

an unwavering light in tnem. I guessed that 
they were regarding the cottage rather as what 
it should be than as what it had become. To 
me it appeared quite perfect. But I surmised that 
to him, artist that he was, it seemed a poor thing 
beside his first flushed conception. 

He knelt down and, partly with the flat of his 
spade, partly with the palm of one hand, redressed 
some (to me obscure) fault in one of the gables. 
He rose, stood back, his eyes slowly endorsed the 
amendment. A few moments later, very suddenly, 
he scudded away to the adjacent breakwater 
and gave himself to the task of scraping off it some 
of the short green sea-weed wherewith he had 
made the cottage's two gardens so pleasantly 
realistic, oases so refreshing in the sandy desert. 
Were the lawns somehow imperfect? Anon, when 
he darted back, I saw what it was that his taste 
had required: lichen, moss, for the roof. Sundry 
morsels and patches of green he deftly disposed 
in the angles of roof and gables. His stock ex- 
hausted, off to the breakwater he darted, and back 
again, to and fro with the lightning directness of a 
hermit-bee making its nest of pollen. The low 
walls that enclosed the two gardens were in need 
of creepers. Little by little, this grace was added 
to them. I stood silently watching. 

I kept silent for fear of discommoding him. 
All artists — by which I mean, of course, all good 



224 AND EVEN NOW 

artists — are shy. They are trustees of something 
not entrusted to us others; they bear fragile 
treasure, not safe in a jostling crowd; they must 
ever be wary. And especially shy are those artists 
whose work is apart from words. A man of letters 
can mitigate his embarrassment among us by a 
certain glibness. Not so can the man who works 
through the medium of visual form and colour. 
Not so, I was sure, could the young architect 
and landscape-gardener here creating. I would 
have moved away had I thought my mere presence 
was a bother to him; but I decided that it was 
not: being a grown-up person, I did not matter; 
he had no fear that I should offer violence to 
his work. It was his cosevals that made him un- 
easy. Groups of these would pause in their wild 
career to stand over him and watch him in a fidgety 
manner that hinted mischief. Suppose one of 
them suddenly jumped — on to the cottage! 

Fragile treasure, this, in a quite literal sense; 
and how awfully exposed! It was spared, how- 
ever. There was even legible on the faces of the 
stolid little boys who viewed it a sort of reluctant 
approval. Some of the little girls seemed to be 
forming with their lips the word 'pretty,' but then 
they exchanged glances with one another, signify- 
ing 'silly.' No one of either sex uttered any word 
of praise. And so, because artists, be they never 
so agoraphobious, do want praise, I did at length 



SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE 225 

break my silence to this one. ' I think it splendid,' 
I said to him. 

He looked up at me, and down at the cottage. 
*Do you.^' he asked, looking up again. I assured 
him that I did; and to test my opinion of him 
I asked whether he didn't think so too. He stood 
the test well. 'I wanted it rather different,' he 
answered. 

'In what way different.?' 

He searched his vocabulary. ' More comf 'table,' 
he found. 

I knew now that he was not merely the architect 
and builder of the cottage, but also, by courtesy of 
imagination, its tenant; but I was tactful enough 
not to let him see that I had guessed this deep 
and delicate secret. I did but ask him, in a quite 
general way, how the cottage could be better. 
He said that it ought to have a porch — 'but 
porches tumble in.' He was too young an artist 
to accept quite meekly the limits imposed by his 
material. He pointed along the lower edge of the 
roof: 'It ought to stick out,' he said, meaning 
that it wanted eaves. I told him not to worry 
about that: it was the sand's fault, not his. 
'What really is sl pity,' I said, 'is that your house 
can't last for ever.' He was tracing now on the 
roof, with the edge of his spade, a criss-cross pat- 
tern, to represent tiles, and he seemed to have for- 
gotten my presence and my kindness. 'Aren't you 



AND EVEN NOW 

sorry,' I asked, raising my voice rather sharply, 
'that the sea is coming in?' 

He glanced at the sea. 'Yes.' He said this 
with a lack of emphasis that seemed to me noble 
though insincere. 

The strain of talking in words of not more than 
three syllables had begun to tell on me. I bade 
the artist good-bye, wandered away up the half- 
dozen steps to the Parade, sat down on a bench, 
and opened the morning paper that I had brought 
out unread. During the War one felt it a duty 
to know the worst before breakfast; now that the 
English polity is threatened merely from within, 
one is apt to dally. . . . Merely from within .^^ 
Is that a right phrase when the nerves of unrestful 
Labour in any one land are interplicated with its 
nerves in any other, so vibrantly? News of the 
dismissal of an erring workman in Timbuctoo is 
enough nowadays to make us apprehensive of vast 
and dreadful effects on our own immediate future. 
How pleasant if we had lived our lives in the 
nineteenth century and no other, with the ground 
all firm under our feet! True, the people who 
flourished then had recurring alarms. But their 
alarms were quite needless; whereas ours — ! Ours, 
as I glanced at this morning's news from Timbuctoo 
and elsewhere, seemed odiously needful. Withal, 
our Old Nobility in its pleasaunces was treading 
once more the old graceful measure which the War 



SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE 227 

arrested; Bohemia had resumed its motley; even 
the middle class was capering, very noticeably. . . 
To gad about smiling as though he were quite well, 
thank you, or to sit down, pull a long face, and 
make his soul, — which, I wondered, is the better 
procedure for a man knowing that very soon he 
will have to undergo a vital operation at the 
hands of a wholly unqualified surgeon who dis- 
likes him personally? I inclined to think the 
gloomier way the less ghastly. But then, I asked 
myself, was my analogy a sound one.^ We are 
at the mercy of Labour, certainly; and Labour 
does not love us; and Labour is not deeply versed 
in statecraft. But would an unskilled surgeon, 
however ill-wishing, care to perform a drastic 
operation on a patient by whose death he himself 
would forthwith perish .^^ Labour is wise enough — 
surely.^ — not to will us destruction. Russia has 
been an awful example. Surely ! And yet. Labour 
does not seem to think the example so awful as I do. 
Queer, this; queer and disquieting. I rose from 
my bench, strolled to the railing, and gazed forth. 
The unrestful, the well-organized and minatory 
sea had been advancing quickly. It was not very 
far now from the cottage. I thought of all the 
civilisations that had been, that were not, that 
were as though they had never been. Must it al- 
ways be thus? — always the same old tale of growth 
and greatness and overthrow, nothingness? I 



228 AND EVEN NOW 

gazed at the cottage, all so solid and seemly, so full 
of endearing character, so like to the 'comf' table' 
polity of England as we have known it. I gazed 
away from it to a large-ish castle that the sea was 
just reaching. A little, then quickly much, the 
waters swirled into the moat. Many children 
stood by, all a-dance with excitement. The castle 
was shedding its sides, lapsing, dwindling, land- 
slipping — gone. O Nineveh ! And now another — 

Memphis? Romei^ — yielded to the cataclysm. 

1 listened to the jubilant screams of the children. 
What rapture, what wantoning! Motionless be- 
side his work stood the builder of the cottage, gaz- 
ing seaward, a pathetic little figure. I hoped the 
other children would have the decency not to exult 
over the unmaking of what he had made so well. 
This hope was not fulfilled. I had not supposed it 
would be. What did surprise me, when anon the 
sea rolled close up to the cottage, was the comport- 
ment of the young artist himself. His sobriety 
gave place to an intense animation. He leapt, he 
waved his spade, he invited the waves with wild 
gestures and gleeful cries. His face had flushed 
bright, and now, as the garden walls crumbled, 
and the paths and lawns were mingled by the 
waters' influence and confluence, and the walls of 
the cottage itself began to totter, and the gables 
sank, and all, all was swallowed, his leaps were so 
high in air, that they recalled to my memory 



SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE 229 

those of a strange religious sect which once visited 
London; and the glare of his eyes was less indica- 
tive of a dreamer than of a triumphant fiend. 

I myself was conscious of a certain wild enthu- 
siasm within me. But this was less surprising for 
that / had not built the cottage, and my fancy had 
not enabled me to dwell in it. It was the boy's 
own enthusiasm that made me feel, as never before, 
how deep-rooted in the human breast the love of 
destruction, of mere destruction, is. And I began 
to ask myself : ' Even if England as we know it, the 
English polity of which that cottage was a symbol 
to me, were the work of (say) Mr. Robert Smillie's 
own unaided hands' — ^but I waived the question 
coming from that hypothesis, and other questions 
that would have followed; for I wished to be happy 
while I might. 



*A CLERGYMAN' 



'A CLERGYMAN' 

igi8. 

FRAGMENTARY, pale, momentary; almost 
nothing; glimpsed and gone; as it were, 
a faint human hand thrust up, never to 
reappear, from beneath the rolling waters of Time, 
he forever haunts my memory and solicits my weak 
imagination. Nothing is told of him but that once, 
abruptly, he asked a question, and received an 
answer. 

This was on the afternoon of April 7th, 1778, 
at Streatham, in the well-appointed house of Mr. 
Thrale. Johnson, on the morning of that day, 
had entertained Boswell at breakfast in Bolt Court 
and invited him to dine at Thrale Hall. The two 
took coach and arrived early. It seems that Sir 
John Pringle had asked Boswell to ask Johnson 
*what were the best English sermons for style.' 
In the interval before dinner, accordingly, Boswell 
reeled off the names of several divines whose prose 
might or might not win commendation. *Atter- 
bury?' he suggested. 'Johnson: Yes, Sir, one 
of the best. Boswell: Tillotson.? Johnson: 
Why, not now. I should not advise any one to 

233 



234 AND EVEN NOW 

imitate Tillotson's style; though I don't know; 
I should be cautious of censuring anything that 
has been applauded by so many suffrages. — South 
is one of the best, if you except his peculiarities, 
and his violence, and sometimes coarseness of lan- 
guage. — Seed has a very fine style ; but he is not very 
theological. — ^Jortin's sermons are very elegant. — 
Sherlock's style, too, is very elegant, though he 
has not made it his principal study. — And you may 
add Smalridge. Boswell: I like Ogden's Sermons 
on Prayer very much, both for neatness of style 
and subtilty of reasoning. Johnson: I should 
like to read all that Ogden has written. Boswell: 
What I want to know is, what sermons afford the 
best specimen of English pulpit eloquence. John- 
son: We have no sermons addressed to the pas- 
sions, that are good for anything; if you mean 
that kind of eloquence. A clergyman, whose 
name I do not recollect : Were not Dodd's sermons 
addressed to the passions? Johnson: They were 
nothing. Sir, be they addressed to what they may.' 

The suddenness of it! Bang! — and the rabbit 
that had popped from its burrow was no more. 

I know not which is the more startling — the 
d^but of the unfortunate clergyman, or the in- 
stantaneousness of his end. Why hadn't Boswell 
told us there was a clergyman present .^^ Well, we 
may be sure that so careful and acute an artist 
had some good reason. And I suppose the clergy- 



*A CLERGYMAN' 235 

man was left to take us unawares because just so 
did he take the company. Had we been told he 
was there, we might have expected that sooner or 
later he would join in the conversation. He would 
have had a place in our minds. We may assume 
that in the minds of the company around Johnson 
he had no place. He sat forgotten, overlooked; 
so that his self-assertion startled every one just 
as on Boswell's page it startles us. In Johnson's 
massive and magnetic presence only some very 
remarkable man, such as Mr. Burke, was sharply 
distinguishable from the rest. Others might, if 
they had something in them, stand out slightly. 
This unfortunate clergyman may have had some- 
thing in him, but I judge that he lacked the gift 
of seeming as if he had. That deficiency, however, 
does not account for the horrid fate that befell 
him. One of Johnson's strongest and most m- 
veterate feelings was his veneration for the Cloth. 
To any one in Holy Orders he habitually listened 
with a grave and charming deference. To-day 
moreover, he was in excellent good humour. He 
was at the Thrales', where he so loved to be; the 
day was fine; a fine dinner was in close prospect; 
and he had had what he always declared to be the 
sum of human felicity — a ride in a coach. Nor 
was there in the question put by the clergyman 
anything likely to enrage him. Dodd was one 
whom Johnson had befriended in adversity; and 



236 AND EVEN NOW 

it had always been agreed that Dodd in his pulpit 
was very emotional. What drew the blasting flash 
must have been not the question itself, but the 
manner in which it was asked. And I think we 
can guess what that manner was. 

Say the words aloud: 'Were not Dodd's sermons 
addressed to the passions?' They are words 
which, if you have any dramatic and histrionic 
sense, cannot be said except in a high, thin voice. 

You may, from sheer perversity, utter them in 
a rich and sonorous baritone or bass. But if you 
do so, they sound utterly unnatural. To make 
them carry the conviction of human utterance, 
you have no choice: you must pipe them. 

Remember, now, Johnson was very deaf. Even 
the people whom he knew well, the people to whose 
voices he was accustomed, had to address him 
very loudly. It is probable that this unregarded, 
young, shy clergyman, when at length he suddenly 
mustered courage to 'cut in,' let his high, thin 
voice soar too high, insomuch that it was a kind 
of scream. On no other hypothesis can we account 
for the ferocity with which Johnson turned and 
Tended him. Johnson didn't, we may be sure, 
mean to be cruel. The old lion, startled, just 
struck out blindly. But the force of paw and 
claws was not the less lethal. We have endless 
testimony to the strength of Johnson's voice; and 
the very cadence of those words, *They were 



'A CLERGYMAN' 237 

nothing. Sir, be they addressed to what they may,' 
convinces me that the old lion's jaws never gave 
forth a louder roar. Boswell does not record that 
there was any further conversation before the 
announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole com- 
pany had been temporarily deafened. But I am 
not bothering about them. My heart goes out to 
the poor dear clergyman exclusively. 

I said a moment ago that he was young and 
shy; and I admit that I slipped those epithets 
in without having justified them to you by due 
process of induction. Your quick mind will have 
already supplied what I omitted. A man with a 
high, thin voice, and without power to impress 
any one with a sense of his importance, a man so 
null in effect that even the retentive mind of Bos- 
well did not retain his very name, would assuredly 
not be a self-confident man. Even if he were not 
naturally shy, social courage would soon have been 
sapped in him, and would in time have been 
destroyed, by experience. That he had not yet 
given himself up as a bad job, that he still had 
faint wild hopes, is proved by the fact that he did 
snatch the opportunity for asking that question. 
He must, accordingly, have been young. Was he 
the curate of the neighbouring church? I think 
so. It would account for his having been invited. 
I see him as he sits there listening to the great 
Doctor's pronouncement on Atterbury and those 



238 AND EVEN NOW 

others. He sits on the edge of a chair in the back- 
ground. He has colourless eyes, fixed earnestly, 
and a face almost as pale as the clerical bands 
beneath his somewhat receding chin. His forehead 
is high and narrow, his hair mouse-coloured. His 
hands are clasped tight before him, the knuckles 
standing out sharply. This constriction does not 
mean that he is steeling himself to speak. He has 
no positive intention of speaking. Very much, 
nevertheless, is he wishing in the back of his mind 
that he could say something — something whereat 
the great Doctor would turn on him and say, after 
a pause for thought, *Why yes. Sir. That is most 
justly observed' or 'Sir, this has never occurred 
to me. I thank you ' — thereby fixing the observer 
forever high in the esteem of all. And now in a 
flash the chance presents itself. * We have,' shouts 
Johnson, *no sermons addressed to the passions, 
that are good for anything.' I see the curate's 
frame quiver with sudden impulse, and his mouth 
fly open, and — no, I can't bear it, I shut my eyes 
and ears. But audible, even so, is something shrill, 
followed by something thunderous. 

Presently I re-open my eyes. The crimson has 
not yet faded from that young face yonder, and 
slowly down either cheek falls a glistening tear. 
Shades of Atterbury and Tillotson! Such weak- 
ness shames the Established Church. What would 
Jortin and Smalridge have said.^ — what Seed and 



*A CLERGYMAN' 239 

South? And, by the way, who were they, these 
worthies? It is a solemn thought that so Uttle is 
conveyed to us by names which to the palaeo- 
Georgians conveyed so much. We discern a dim, 
composite picture of a big man in a big wig and 
a billowing black gown, with a big congregation 
beneath him. But we are not anxious to hear 
what he is saying. We know it is all very elegant. 
We know it will be printed and be bound in finely 
tooled full calf, and no palaeo-Georgian gentleman's 
library will be complete without it. Literate people 
in those days were comparatively few; but, bating 
that, one may say that sermons were as much in 
request as novels are to-day. I wonder, will man- 
kind continue to be capricious? It is a very 
solemn thought indeed that no more than a hun- 
dred-and-fif ty years hence the novelists of our time, 
with all their moral and political and sociological 
outlook and influence, will perhaps shine as indis- 
tinctly as do those old preachers, with all their 
elegance, now. 'Yes, Sir,' some great pundit may 
be telling a disciple at this moment, * Wells is one of 
the best. Galsworthy is one of the best, if you 
except his concern for delicacy of style. Mrs. 
Ward has a very firm grasp of problems, but is not 
very creational. — Caine's books are very edifying. 
I should like to read all that Caine has written. 
Miss Corelli, too, is very edifying.— And you may 
add Upton Sinclair.' 'What I want to know,' says 



240 AND EVEN NOW 

the disciple, *is, what English novels may be se- 
lected as specially enthralling.' The pundit an- 
swers : * We have no novels addressed to the pas- 
sions that are good for anything, if you mean that 
kind of enthralment.' And here some poor wretch 
(whose name the disciple will not remember) 
inquires: 'Are not Mrs. Glyn's novels addressed 
to the passions .f^' and is in due form annihilated. 
Can it be that a time will come when readers of 
this passage in our pundit's life will take more 
interest in the poor nameless wretch than in all the 
bearers of those great names put together, being no 
more able or anxious to discriminate between (say) 
Mrs. Ward and Mr. Sinclair than we are to set 
Ogden above Sherlock, or Sherlock above Ogden.f^ 
It seems impossible. But we must remember that 
things are not always what they seem. 

Every man illustrious in his day, however much 
he may be gratified by his fame, looks with an 
eager eye to posterity for a continuance of past 
favours, and would even live the remainder of his 
life in obscurity if by so doing he could insure that 
future generations would preserve a correct atti- 
tude towards him forever. This is very natural 
and human, but, like so many very natural and 
human things, very silly. Tillotson and the rest 
need not, after all, be pitied for our neglect of them. 
They either know nothing about it, or are above 
such terrene trifles. Let us keep our pity for the 



'A CLERGYMAN' 241 

great seething mass of divines who were not 
elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while 
they lasted. And let us keep a specially large por- 
tion for one whose lot was so much worse than 
merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate 
had not been at the Thrales' that day, or, being 
there, had kept the silence that so well became him, 
his life would have been drab enough in all con- 
science. But at any rate an unpromising career 
would not have been nipped in the bud. And that 
is what in fact happened, I'm sure of it. A robust 
man might have rallied under the blow. Not so our 
friend. Those who knew him in infancy had not ex- 
pected that he would be reared. Better for him had 
they been right. It is well to grow up and be or- 
dained, but not if you are delicate and very sensi- 
tive, and shall happen to annoy the greatest, the 
most stentorian and roughest of contemporary per- 
sonages. *A Clergyman' never held up his head or 
smiled again after the brief encounter recorded for 
us by Boswell. He sank into a rapid decline. Be- 
fore the next blossoming of Thrale Hall's almond 
trees he was no more. I like to think that he died 
forgiving Dr. Johnson. 



THE CRIME 



THE CRIME 

ig20. 

ON a bleak wet stormy afternoon at the outset 
of last year's Spring, I was in a cottage, 
all alone, and knowing that I must be all 
alone till evening. It was a remote cottage, in a 
remote county, and had been 'let furnished' by 
its owner. My spirits are easily affected by 
weather, and I hate solitude. And I dislike to be 
master of things that are not mine. *Be careful 
not to break us,' say the glass and china. * You'd 
better not spill ink on me,' growls the carpet. 
* None of your dog's-earing, thumb-marking, back- 
breaking tricks herel ' snarl the books. 

The books in this cottage looked particularly 
disagreeable — horrid little upstarts of this and that 
scarlet or cerulean 'series' of 'standard' authors. 
Having gloomily surveyed them, I turned my back 
on them, and watched the rain streaming down the 
latticed w'ndow, whose panes seemed likely to be 
shattered at any moment by the wind. I have 
known men who constantly visit the Central 
Criminal Court, visit also the scenes where famous 
crimes were committed, form their own theories of 

245 



246 AND EVEN NOW 

those crimes, collect souvenirs of those crimes, and 
call themselves Criminologists. As for me, my 
interest in crime is, alas, merely morbid. I did not 
know, as those others would doubtless have known, 
that the situation in which I found myself was 
precisely of the kind most conducive to the darkest 
deeds. I did but bemoan it, and think of Lear in 
the hovel on the heath. The wind howled in the 
chimney, and the rain had begun to sputter right 
down it, so that the fire was beginning to hiss in a 
very sinister manner. Suppose the fire went out! 
It looked as if it meant to. I snatched the pair of 
bellows that hung beside it. I plied them vigor- 
ously. *Now mind! — not too vigorously. We 
aren't yours!' they wheezed. I handled them 
more gently. But I did not release them till they 
had secured me a steady blaze. 

I sat down before that blaze. Despair had been 
warded off. Gloom, however, remained; and 
gloom grew. I felt that I should prefer any one's 
thoughts to mine. I rose, I returned to the books. 
A dozen or so of those which were on the lowest of 
the three shelves were full-sized, were octavo, 
looked as though they had been bought to be 
read. I would exercise my undoubted right to 
read one of them. Which of them? I gradually 
decided on a novel by a well-known writer whose 
works, though I had several times had the honour 
of meeting her, were known to me only by repute. 



THE CRIME 247 

I knew nothing of them that was not good. The 
lady's 'output' had not been at all huge, and it 
was agreed that her 'level' was high. I had 
always gathered that the chief characteristic of 
her work was its great 'vitality.' The book in my 
hand was a third edition of her latest novel, and at 
the end of it were numerous press-notices, at which 
I glanced for confirmation. 'Immense vitality,' 
yes, said one critic. 'Full,' said another, 'of an 
intense vitality.' 'A book that will live,' said a 
third. How on earth did he know that.^ I was, 
however, very willing to believe in the vitality of 
this writer for all present purposes. Vitality was a 
thing in which she herself, her talk, her glance, her 
gestures, abounded. She and they had been, I 
remembered, rather too much for me. The first 
time I met her, she said something that I lightly 
and mildly disputed. On no future occasion did I 
stem any opinion of hers. Not that she had been 
rude. Far from it. She had but in a sisterly, 
brotherly way, and yet in a way that was filially 
eager too, asked me to explain my point. I did 
my best. She was all attention. But I was 
conscious that my best, under her eye, was not 
good. She was quick to help me: she said for me 
just what I had tried to say, and proceeded to show 
me just why it was wrong. I smiled the gallant 
smile of a man who regards women as all the more 
adorable because logic is not their strong point. 



248 AND EVEN NOW 

bless them! She asked — not aggressively, but 
strenuously, as one who dearly loves a joke — what 
I was smiling at. Altogether, a chastening en- 
counter; and my memory of it was tinged with a 
feeble resentment. How she had scored. No man 
likes to be worsted in argument by a woman. And 
I fancy that to be vanquished by a feminine writer 
is the kind of defeat least of all agreeable to a man 
who writes. A *sex war,' we are often told is to 
be one of the features of the world's future — 
women demanding the right to do men's work, and 
men refusing, resisting, counter-attacking. It seems 
likely enough. One can believe anything of the 
world's future. Yet one conceives that not all 
men, if this particular evil come to pass, will stand 
packed shoulder to shoulder against all women. 
One does not feel that the dockers will be very 
bitter against such women as want to be miners, or 
the plumbers frown much upon the would-be 
steeple- Jills. I myself have never had my sense of 
fitness jarred, nor a spark of animosity roused in 
me, by a woman practising any of the fine arts — 
except the art of writing. That she should write a 
few little poems or pensees, or some impressions of 
a trip in a dahabieh as far as (say) Biskra, or even 
a short story or two, seems to me not wholly amiss, 
even though she do such things for publication. 
But that she should be an habitual, professional 
author, with a passion for her art, and a fountain- 



THE CRIME 249 

pen and an agent, and sums down in advance of 
royalties on sales in Canada and Australia, and a 
profound knowledge of human character, and an 
essentially sane outlook, is somehow incongruous 
with my notions — my mistaken notions, if you will 
— of what she ought to be. 

* Has a profound knowledge of human character, 
and an essentially sane outlook' said one of the 
critics quoted at the end of the book that I had 
chosen. The wind and the rain in the chimney had 
not abated, but the fire was bearing up bravely. 
So would I. I would read cheerfully and without 
prejudice. I poked the fire and, pushing my chair 
slightly back, lest the heat should warp the book's 
covers, began Chapter I. A woman sat writing in 
a summer-house at the end of a small garden that 
overlooked a great valley in Surrey. The descrip- 
tion of her was calculated to make her very admir- 
able — a thorough woman, not strictly beautiful, but 
likely to be thought beautiful by those who knew 
her well; not dressed as though she gave much 
heed to her clothes, but dressed in a fashion that 
exactly harmonised with her special type. Her pen 
* travelled' rapidly across the foolscap, and while 
it did so she was described in more and more detail. 
But at length she came to a * knotty point' in what 
she was writing. She paused, she pushed back the 
hair from her temples, she looked forth at the 
valley; and now the landscape was described, but 



250 AND EVEN NOW 

not at all exhaustively, it, for the writer soon 
overcame her difficulty, and her pen travelled 
faster than ever, till suddenly there was a cry of 
'Mammy!' and in rushed a seven-year-old child, 
in conjunction with whom she was more than ever 
admirable; aiter which the narrative skipped back 
across eight years, and the woman became a girl 
giving as yet no token of future eminence in litera- 
ture, but — I had an impulse which I obeyed almost 
before I was conscious of it. 

Nobody could have been more surprised than I 
was at what I had done — done so neatly, so quietly 
and gently. The book stood closed, upright, with 
its back to me, just as on a book-shelf, behind the 
bars of the grate. There it was. And it gave 
forth, as the flames crept up the blue cloth sides of 
it, a pleasant though acrid smell. My astonish- 
ment had passed, giving place to an exquisite 
satisfaction. How pottering and fumbling a thing 
was even the best kind of written criticism! I 
understood the contempt felt by the man of action 
for the man of words. But what pleased me most 
was that at last, actually, I, at my age, I of all 
people, had committed a crime — was guilty of a 
crime. I had power to revoke it. I might write 
to my bookseller for an unburnt copy, and place it 
on the shelf where this one had stood — this 
gloriously glowing one. I would do nothing of the 
sort. What I had done I had done. I would wear 



THE CRIME 251 

forever on my conscience the white rose of theft 
and the red rose of arson. If hereafter the owner 
of this cottage happened to miss that volume — let 
him ! If he were fool enough to write to me about 
it, would I share my grand secret with him? No. 
Gently, with his poker, I prodded that volume 
further among the coals. The all-but-consumed 
binding shot forth little tongues of bright colour — 
flamelets of sapphire, amethyst, emerald. Charm- 
ing! Could even the author herself not admire 
them.f^ Perhaps. Poor woman! — I had scored 
now, scored so perfectly that I felt myself to be 
almost a brute while I poked off the loosened black 
outer pages and led the fire on to pages that we^-e 
but pale brown. 

These were quickly devoured. But it seemed to 
me that whenever I left the fire to forage for itself 
it made little headway. I pushed the book over 
on its side. The flames closed on it, but presently, 
licking their lips, fell back, as though they had had 
enough. I took the tongs and put the book 
upright again, and raked it fore and aft. It seemed 
almost as thick as ever. With poker and tongs I 
carved it into two, three sections — the inner pages 
flashing white as when they were sent to the 
binders. Strange! Aforetime, a book was burnt 
now and again in the market-place by the common 
hangman. Was he, I wondered, paid by the hour? 
I had always supposed the thing quite easy for him , 



^52 AND EVEN NOW 

— a bright little, brisk little conflagration, and so 
home. Perhaps other books were less resistant 
than this one? I began to feel that the critics 
were more right than they knew. Here was a book 
that had indeed an intense vitality, and an im- 
m.ense vitality. It was a book that would live — do 
what one might. I vowed it should not. I sub-i 
divided it, spread it, redistributed it. Ever and 
anon my eye would be caught by some sentence or 
fragment of a sentence in the midst of a charred 
page before the flames crept over it, 'Iways 
loathed you, bu', I remember; and *ning. Tolstoi 
was right.' Who had always loathed whom.'^ And 
what, what, had Tolstoi been right about .^^ I had 
an absurd but genuine desire to know. Too late! 
Confound the woman ! — she was scoring again. I 
furiously drove her pages into the yawning crimson 
jaws of the coals. Those jaws had lately been 
golden. Soon, to my horror, they seemed to be 
growing grey. They seemed to be closing — on 
nothing. Flakes of black paper, full-sized layers of 
paper brown and white, began to hide them from 
me altogether. I sprinkled a boxful of wax 
matches. I resumed the bellows. I lunged with the 
poker. I held a newspaper over the whole grate. 
I did all that inspiration could suggest, or skill ac- 
complish. Vainly. The fire went out — darkly, 
dismally, gradually, quite out. 

How she had scored again! But she did not 



THE CRIME 253 

know it. I felt no bitterness against her as I lay 
back in my chair, inert, listening to the storm that 
was still raging. I blamed only myself. I had 
done wrong. The small room became very cold. 
Whose fault was that but my own.^ I had done 
wrong hastily, but had done it and been glad of 
it. I had not remembered the words a wise king 
wrote long ago, that the lamp of the wicked shall 
be put out, and that the way of trangressors is 
hard. 



IN HOMES UNBLEST 



IN HOMES UNBLEST 

1919. 

NOTHING is more pleasant than to see 
suddenly endowed with motion a thing 
stagnant by nature. The hat that on 
the head of the man in the street is nothing to us, 
how much it is if it be animated by a gust of wind ! 
There is no churl that does not rejoice with it in its 
strength, and in the swiftness and cunning that 
baffle its pursuer, who, he too, when the chase is 
over, bears it no ill will at all for its escapade. I 
know families that have sat for hours, for hours 
after bedtime, mute, in a dim light, pressing a table 
with their finger-tips, and ever bringing to bear the 
full force of their minds on it, in the unconquerable 
hope that it would move. Conversely, nothing is 
more dismal than to see set in permanent rigidness 
a thing whose aspect is linked for us with the idea of 
great mobility. Even the blithest of us and least 
easily depressed would make a long detour to avoid 
a stuffed squirrel or a case of pinned butterflies. 
And you can well imagine with what a sinking of 
the heart I beheld, this morning, on a road near 
the coast of Norfolk, a railway-car without wheels. 

257 



258 AND EVEN NOW 

Without wheels though it was, it had motion — 
of a kind; of a kind worse than actual stagnation. 
Mounted on a very long steam-lorry that groaned 
and panted, it very slowly passed me. I noted 
that two of its compartments were marked first, 
the rest third. And in some of them, I noted, you 
might smoke. But of this opportunity you were 
not availing yourseK. All the compartments, the 
cheap and the dear alike, were vacant. They 
were transporting air only — and this (I conceived) 
abominable. The sun slanted fiercely down on the 
old iron roof, the old wooden walls, the dingy shut 
windows. The fume and grime of a thousand 
familiar tunnels, of year after year of journeys by 
night, journeys by day, from time immemorial, 
seemed to have invested the whole structure with 
a character that shrank from the sun's scrutiny and 
from the nearness of sea and fields. Fuliginous, 
monstrous, slowly, shamefully, the thing went by — 
to what final goal.^ — in the lovely weather. 

There attended it, besides the driver of the lorry, 
a straggling retinue of half-a-dozen men on foot — 
handy-looking mechanics, very dusty. I should 
have liked to question one or another of these as 
to their mission. But I was afraid to do so. There 
is an art of talking acceptably to people who do not 
regard themselves as members of one's own class; 
and I have never acquired it. I suppose the first 
step is to forget that any art is needed — to forget 



IN HOMES UNBLEST 259 

that one must not be so wildly cordial for fear of 
seeming to * condescend/ nor be more than a 
trifle saturnine, either, for the same motive. Or 
am I wrong? The whole thing is a mystery to me. 
All I know is that if I asked those mechanics 
what they were doing with that railway car they 
would have seemed to suspect me of meaning that 
it was my property and that they had stolen it. 
Or perhaps they would have seemed merely to 
resent my idle curiosity. If so, why not? When 
I walk abroad with a sheaf of manuscript in Hiy 
hand, mechanics do not stop me to ask 'What's 
that? What's it about? Who's going to publish 
it?' Nor is this because, times having changed 
so, they are afraid of seeming to condescend. 
They always did mind their own business. And 
now that their own business is so much more 
lucrative than mine they still follow that golden 
rule. 

I stood gazing back at the procession till it dis- 
appeared round a bend of the road. Its bequest of 
dust and smoke was quickly spent by a prodigal 
young breeze. Landscape and seascape were re- 
indued with their full amenities. Ruskin would 
have been pleased. So indeed was I; but that 
railway-car (in which, it romantically struck me, I 
myself might once, might frequently, have trav- 
elled) was still upmost in my brooding mind. To 
what manner of wretched end was it destined? No 



260 AND EVEN NOW 

end would have seemed bad enough for it to Rus- 
kin. But I was born late enough to acquiesce in 
railways and in all that pertains to them. And 
now, since the success of motor-cars (those far 
greater, because unrestricted, bores), railways have 
taken on for me some such charm as the memory of 
the posting coaches had for the greybeards of my 
boyhood, some such charm as aeroplanes may in 
the fulness of time foist down for us on motor-cars. 
*But I rove,' like Sir Thomas More. And I seem 
to think that a cheap literary allusion will make 
you excuse that vice. To resume my breathless 
narrative: I decided that I would slowly follow the 
tracks of the lorry. 

I supposed that these were leading me to some 
great scrapping-place filled with the remains of 
other railway-cars foully scrapped for some fell 
industrial purpose. But this was a bad guess. 
The tracks led me at last through a lane and thence 
into sight of a little bay, on whose waters were 
perceptible the sleek heads of sundry human beings, 
and on its sands the full-lengths of sundry other 
human beings in bath-robes, reading novels or 
merely basking. There was nowhere any sign of 
industrialism. More than ever was I intrigued as 
to the fate of the old railway-car that I had been 
stalking. It and its lorry had halted on the flat 
grassy land that fringed the sands. This land was 
dominated by a crescent of queer little garish 



IN HOMES UNBLEST 261 

tenements, the like of which I had never seen, nor 
would wish to see again. They did not stand on 
the ground, but on stakes of wood and shafts of 
brick, six feet or so above the ground's level, and 
were led up to by flights of wooden steps that tried 
not to look like ladders. They displeased me much. 
They had little railed platforms round them, and 
things hanging out to dry on the railings ; and their 
walls vied unneighbourly with one another in 
lawless colour-schemes. One tenement was sal- 
mon-pink with wide bands of scarlet, another sky 
blue with a key pattern in orange, and so on around 
the whole little horrid array. And I deduced, from 
certain upstanding stakes and shafts at the nearer 
end of the crescent, that the horror was not com- 
plete yet. A suspicion dawned in me, and be- 
came, while I gazed again at the crescent's fagades, 
a glaring certainty; in the light of which I saw that 
I had been wrong about the old railway-car. De- 
funct, it was not to die. It was to have a new 
function. 

I had once heard that disused railway-cars were 
convertible into sea-side cottages. But the news 
had not fired my imagination nor protruded in my 
memory. To-day, as an eye-witness of the ac- 
complished fact, I was impressed, sharply enough, 
and I went nearer to the crescent, drawn by a 
sort of dreadful fascination. I found that the 
cottages all had names. One cottage was Mer- 



262 AND EVEN NOW 

maid's Rock; another (which had fluttering 
window-curtains of Stuart tartan), Spray o' the 
Sea; another. The Nest; another, Brinynook; 
and yet another had been named, with less fitness, 
but in an ampler and to me more interesting spirit. 
Pet worth. I looked from them to the not-yet- 
eonverted railway-car. It had a wonderful dignity. 
In its austere and monumental way, it was very 
beautiful. It was a noble work of man, and Nature 
smiled on it. I wondered with what colours it 
was to be bejezebelled, and what name — Bolton 
Abbey .^ — Glad Eye? — Gay Wee Gehenna!^ — it 
would have to bear, and what manner of man or 
woman was going to rent it. 

It was on this last point that I mused especially. 
The housing problem is hard, doubtless; but 
nobody, my mind protested as I surveyed the cres- 
cent, nobody is driven to so desperate a solution 
of it as this! There are tents, there are caves, 
there are hollow trees . . . and there are people 
who prefer — this! Yes, 'this' is a positive taste, 
not a necessity at all. I swept the bay with a 
searching eye; but heads on the surface of water 
tell nothing to the sociologist, and in bath-robes 
even full-lengths on the sand give him no clue. 
Three or four of the full-lengths had risen and 
strolled up to the lorry, around which the mechanics 
were engaged in some dispute of a technical nature 
I hoped the full-lengths would have something to 



IN HOMES UNBLEST 263 

say too. But they said nothing. This I set down 
to sheer perversity. I was more than three miles 
from the place where I am sojourning, and the hour 
for luncheon was nearly due. I left the bay 
without having been able to determine the char- 
acter, the kind, of its denizens. 

I take it there is a strong tincture of Bohemianism 
in them. Mr. Desmond MacCarthy, of whose judg- 
ment I am always trustful, has said that the hall- 
mark of Bohemianism is a tendency to use things 
for purposes to which they are not adapted. You 
are a Bohemian, says Mr. MacCarthy, if you would 
gladly use a razor for buttering your toast at 
breakfast, and you aren't if you wouldn't. I think 
he would agree that the choice of a home is a surer 
index than any fleeting action, however strange, 
and that really the best-certified Bohemians are 
they who choose to reside in railway-cars on stilts. 
But — why particularly railway-cars .^^ That is a 
difficult question. A possible answer is that the 
Bohemian, as tending always to nomady, feels 
that the least uncongenial way of settling down is 
to stow himself into a thing fashioned for darting 
hither and thither. Yet no, this answer won't 
do. It is ruled out by the law I laid down in my 
first paragraph. There's nothing sadder to eye or 
heart than a very mobile thing made immovable. 

No house, especially if you are by way of being 
nomadic, can be so ill to live in as one that in its 



264 AND EVEN NOW 

heyday went gadding all over the place. And, on 
the other hand what house more eligible than one 
that can gad? I myself am not restless, and am 
fond of comfort: I should not care to live in a 
caravan. But I have always liked the idea of a 
caravan. And if you, alas, O reader, are a dweller 
in a railway-car, I commend the idea to you. Take 
it, with my apologies for any words of mine that 
may have nettled you. Put it into practice. 
Think of the white road and the shifting hedgerows 
and the counties that you will soon lose count of. 
And think what a blessing it will be for you to 
know that your house is not the one in which the 
Merstham Tunnel murder was committed. 



WILLIAM AND MARY 



WILLIAM AND MARY 

ig2o. 

MEMORIES, like olives, are an acquired 
taste. William and Mary (I give them 
the Christian names that were indeed 
theirs — the joint title by which their friends always 
referred to them) were for some years an interest 
in my life, and had a hold on my affection. But a 
time came when, though I had known and liked 
them too well ever to forget them, I gave them but 
a few thoughts now and then. How being dead, 
could they keep their place in the mind of a young 
man surrounded with large and constantly renewed 
consignments of the living.^ As one grows older, 
the charm of novelty wears off. One finds that 
there is no such thing as novelty — or, at any rate, 
that one has lost the faculty for perceiving it. One 
sees every newcomer not as something strange and 
special, but as a ticketed specimen of this or that 
very familiar genus. The world has ceased to be 
remarkable; and one tends to think more and 
more often of the days when it was so very remark- 
able indeed. 

I suppose that had I been thirty years older 

267 



268 AND EVEN NOW 

when first I knew him, WilKam would have 
seemed to me little worthier of attention than a 
twopenny postage-stamp seems to-day. Yet, no: 
William really had some oddities that would have 
caught even an oldster's eye. In himself he was 
commonplace enough (as I, coaeval though I w^as 
with him, soon saw). But in details of surface he 
was unusual. In them he happened to be rather 
ahead of his time. He was a socialist, for example. 
In 1890 there was only one other socialist in Oxford, 
and he not at all an undergraduate, but a retired 
chimney-sweep, named Hines, who made speeches, 
to which nobody, except perhaps William, listened, 
near the Martyrs' Memorial. And William wore a 
flannel shirt, and rode a bicycle — very strange 
habits in those days, and very horrible. He was 
said to be (though he was short-sighted and wore 
glasses) a first-rate 'back' at football; but, as 
football was a thing frowned on by the rowing men, 
and coldly ignored by the bloods, his talent for it 
did not help him: he was one of the principal 
pariahs of our College; and it was rather in a spirit 
of bravado, and to show how sure of myself I was, 
that I began, in my second year, to cultivate his 
acquaintance. 

We had little in common. I could not think 
Political Economy 'the most exciting thing in the 
world,' as he used to call it. Nor could I without 
yawning listen to more than a few lines of Mr. 



WILLIAM AND MARY 269 

William Morris' interminable smooth Icelandic 
Sagas, which my friend, pious young socialist that 
he was, thought 'glorious.' He had begun to 
write an Icelandic Saga himself, and had already 
achieved some hundreds of verses. None of these 
pleased him, though to me they seemed very like 
his master's. I can see him now, standing on his 
hearth-rug, holding his MS. close to his short- 
sighted eyes, declaiming the verses and trying, with 
many angular gestures of his left hand, to animate 
them — a tall, broad, raw-boned fellow, with long 
brown hair flung back from his forehead, and a very 
shabby suit of clothes. Because of his clothes and 
his socialism, and his habit of offering beer to a 
guest, I had at first supposed him quite poor; and 
I was surprised when he told me that he had from 
his guardian (his parents being dead) an allowance 
of £350, and that when he came of age he would 
have an income of £400. *A11 out of dividends,' 
he would groan. I would hint that Mr. Hines and 
similar zealots might disembarrass him of this load, 
if he asked them nicely. 'No,' he would say quite 
seriously, 'I can't do that,' and would read out 
passages from 'Fabian Essays' to show that in 
the present anarchical conditions only mischief 
could result from sporadic dispersal of rent. ' Ten, 
twelve years hence — ' he would muse more hope- 
fully. 'But by that time,' I would say, 'you'll 
probably be married, and your wife mightn't 



270 AND EVEN NOW 

quite — ', whereat he would hotly repeat what he 
had said many times: that he would never marry. 
Marriage was an anti-social anachronism. I think 
its survival was in some part due to the machina- 
tions of Capital. Anyway, it was doomed. Tem- 
porary civil contracts between men and women 
would be the rule 'ten, twelve years hence'; 
pending which time the lot of any man who had 
civic sense must be celibacy, tempered perhaps 
with free love. i ,., 

Long before that time was up, nevertheless, 
William married. One afternoon in the spring of 
'95 1 happened to meet him at a corner of Cockspur 
Street. I wondered at the immense cordiality of 
his greeting; for our friendship, such as it was, had 
waned in our two final years at Oxford. *You 
look very flourishing, and,' I said, 'you're wearing 
a new suit!' *I'm married,' he replied, obvi- 
ously without a twinge of conscience. He told 
me he had been married just a month. He declared 
that to be married was the most splendid thing in 
all the world; but he weakened the force of this 
generalisation by adding that there never was any 
one like his wife. 'You must see her,' he said; 
and his impatience to show her proudly off to some 
one was so evident, and so touching, that I could 
but accept his invitation to go and stay with them 
for two or three days — 'why not next week.'*' 
They had taken and furnished *a sort of cottage' 



WILLIAM AND MARY 271 

in shire, and this was their home. He had 

*run up for the day, on business — journaHsm' 
and was now on his way to Charing Cross. *I 
know you'll like my wife,' he said at parting. 
'She's — well, she's glorious.' 

As this was the epithet he had erst applied to 
* Beowulf and to 'Sigurd the Volsung' it raised 
no high hopes. And indeed, as I was soon to find, 
he had again misused it. There was nothing 
glorious about his bride. Some people might even 
have not thought her pretty. I myself did not, in 
the flash of first sight. Neat, insignificant, pleas- 
ing, was what she appeared to me, rather than 
pretty, and far rather than glorious. In an age of 
fringes, her brow was severely bare. She looked 
'practical.' But an instant later, when she smiled, 
I saw that she was pretty, too. And presently I 
thought her delightful. William had met me in a 
'governess cart,' and we went to see him unhar- 
ness the pony. He did this in a fumbling, experi- 
mental way, confusing the reins with the traces, 
and profiting so little by his wife's directions that 
she began to laugh. And her laugh was a lovely 
thing; quite a small sound, but exquisitely clear 
and gay, coming in a sequence of notes that neither 
rose nor fell, that were quite even; a trill of notes, 
and then another, and another, as though she 
were pulling repeatedly a little silver bell . . . 
As I describe it, perhaps the sound may be 



272 AND EVEN N'OW 

imagined irritating. I can only say it was en- 
chanting. 

I wished she would go on laughing; but she 
ceased, she darted forward and (William standing 
obediently aside, and I helping unhelpfully) unhar- 
nessed the pony herself, and led it into its small 
stable. Decidedly, she was * practical,' but — I 
was prepared now to be lenient to any quality she 
might have. 

Had she been feckless, no doubt I should have 
forgiven her that, too; but I might have enjoyed 
my visit less than I did, and might have been less 
pleased to go often again. I had expected to 
* rough it' under William's roof. But everything 
thereunder, within the limits of a strict Arcadian 
simplicity, was well-ordered. I was touched, when 
I went to my bedroom, by the precision with which 
the very small maid had unpacked and disposed 
my things. And I wondered where my hostess had 
got the lore she had so evidently imparted. Cer- 
tainly not from William. Perhaps (it only now 
strikes me) from a handbook. For Mary was great 
at handbooks. She had handbooks about garden- 
ing, and others about poultry, and one about ' the 
stable,' and others on cognate themes. From these 
she had filled up the gaps left in her education by 
her father, who was a widower and either a doctor 
or a solicitor — I forget which — in one of the smallest 
towns of an adjoining county. And I daresay she 



WILLIAM AND MARY 273 

may have had, somewhere hidden away, a manual 
for young hostesses. If so, it must have been a 
good one. But to say this is to behttle Mary's 
powers of intuition. It was they, sharpened by her 
adoration of WilHam, and by her intensity for 
everything around him, that made her so eflficient 
a housewife. 

If she possessed a manual for young house- 
hunters, it was assuredly not by the light of this 
that she had chosen the home they were installed 
in. The 'sort of cottage' had been vacant for 
many years — an unpromising and ineligible object, 
a mile away from a village, and three miles away 
from a railway station. The main part of it was 
an actual cottage, of seventeenth-century work- 
manship ; but a little stuccoed wing had been added 
to each side of it, in 1850 or thereabouts, by an 
eccentric old gentleman who at that time chose to 
make it his home. He had added also the small 
stable, a dairy, and other appanages. For these, 
and for garden, there was plenty of room, as he had 
purchased and enclosed half an acre of the sur- 
rounding land. Those two stuccoed, very Victorian 
wings of his, each with a sash-window above and a 
French window below, consorted queerly with the 
old red brick and the latticed panes. And the 
long wooden veranda that he had invoked did not 
unify the trinity. But one didn't want it to. The 
wrongness had a character all its own. The wrong- 



274 AND EVEN NOW 

ness was right — at any rate after Mary had hit on 
it for William. As a spinster, she would, I think, 
have been happiest in a trim modern villa. But it 
was a belief of hers that she had married a man of 
strange genius. She had married him for himself, 
not for his genius; but this added grace in him 
was a thing to be reckoned with, ever so much; a 
thing she must coddle to the utmost in a proper 
setting. She was a year older than he (though, 
being so small and slight, she looked several years 
younger), and in her devotion the maternal instinct 
played a great part. William, as I have already 
conveyed to you, was not greatly gifted. Mary's 
instinct, in this one matter, was at fault. But 
endearingly, rightly at fault. And, as William was 
outwardly odd, wasn't it well that his home should 
be so, too.f^ On the inside, comfort was what Mary 
always aimed at for him, and achieved. 

The ground floor had all been made one room, 
into which you stepped straight from the open air. 
Quite a long big room (or so it seemed, from the 
lowness of the ceiling), and well-freshened in its 
antiquity, with rush-mats here and there on the ir- 
regular red tiles, and very white whitewash on the 
plaster between the rafters. This was the dining- 
room, drawing-room, and general focus throughout 
the day, and was called simply the Room. William 
had a 'den' on the ground floor of the left wing; 
and there, in the mornings, he used to write a great 



WILLIAM AND MARY 275 

deal. Mary had no special place of her own: her 
place was wherever her duties needed her. William 

wrote reviews of books for the Daily . He did 

also creative work. The vein of poetry in him had 
worked itself out — or rather, it expressed itself for 
him in Mary. For technical purposes, the influence 
of Ibsen had superseded that of Morris. At the 
time of my first visit, he was writing an extra- 
ordinarily gloomy play about an extraordinarily 
unhappy marriage. In subsequent seasons (Ibsen's 
disc having been somehow eclipsed for him by 
George Gissing's) he was usually writing novels in 
which every one — or do I exaggerate.^ — had made 
a disastrous match. I think Mary's belief in his 
genius had made him less diffident than he was at 
Oxford. He was always emerging from his den, 
with fresh pages of MS., into the Room. *You 
don't mind.f^' he would say, waving his pages, and 
then would shout 'Mary!' She was always 
promptly forthcoming — sometimes from the direc- 
tion of the kitchen, in a white apron, sometimes 
from the garden, in a blue one. She never looked 
at him while he read. To do so would have been 
lacking in respect for his work. It was on this that 
she must concentrate her whole mind, privileged 
auditor that she was. She sat looking straight 
before her, with her lips slightly compressed, and 
her hands folded on her lap. I used to wonder that 
there had been that first moment when I did not 



276 AND EVEN NOW 

think her pretty. Her eyes were of a very light 
hazel, seeming all the lighter because her hair was 
of so dark a brown; and they were beautifully set 
in a face of that 'pinched oval' kind which is 
rather rare in England. Mary as listener would 
have atoned to me for any defects there may have 
been in dear old William's work. Nevertheless, I 
sometimes wished this work had some comic relief 
in it. Publishers, I believe, shared this wish; hence 
the eternal absence of William's name from among 
their announcements. For Mary's sake, and his, I 
should have liked him to be 'successful.' But at 
any rate he didn't need money. He didn't need, in 
addition to what he had, what he made by his 
journalism. And as for success — well, didn't Mary 
think him a genius.? And wasn't he Mary's hus- 
band? The main reason why I wished for light 
passages in what he read to us was that they would 
have been cues for Mary's laugh. This was a thing 
always new to me. I never tired of that little bell- 
like euphony; those funny little lucid and level 
trills. 

There was no stint of that charm when William 
was not reading to us. Mary was in no awe of him, 
apart from his work, and in no awe at all of me: 
she used to laugh at us both, for one thing and 
another — just the same laugh as I had first heard 
when William tried to unharness the pony. I 
cultivated in myself whatever amused her in me; 



WILLIAM AND MARY 277 

I drew out whatever amused her in Winiam; I 
never let slip any of the things that amused her in 
herself. 'Chaff' is a great bond; and I should 
have enjoyed our bouts of it even without Mary's 
own special ohhligato. She used to call me (for I 
was very urban in those days) the Gentleman from 
London. I used to call her the Brave Little 
Woman. Whatever either of us said or did could 
be twisted easily into relation to those two titles; 
and our bouts, to which William listened with a 
puzzled, benevolent smile, used to cease only be- 
cause Mary regarded me as a possible purveyor of 
what William, she was sure, wanted and needed 
down there in the country, alone with her: intel- 
lectual conversation, after his work. She often, I 
think, invented duties in garden or kitchen so that 
he should have this stimulus, or luxury, without 
hindrance. But when William was alone with me 
it was about her that he liked to talk, and that I 
myself liked to talk too. He was very sound on 
the subject of Mary; and so was I. And if, when 
I was alone with Mary, I seemed to be sounder than 
I was on the subject of William's wonderfulness, 
who shall blame me.^^ 

Had Mary been a mother, William's wonderful- 
ness would have been less greatly important. But 
he was her child as well as her lover. And I think, 
though I do not know, she believed herself content 
that this should always be, if so it were destined. 



278 AND EVEN NOW 

It was not destined so. On the first night of a 
visit I paid them in April, 1899, William, when we 
were alone, told me news. I had been vaguely 
conscious, throughout the evening, of some change; 
conscious that Mary had grown gayer, and less gay 
— somehow different, somehow remote. William 
said that her child would be born in September, 
if all went well. 'She's immensely happy,' he 
told me. I realised that she was indeed happier 
than ever . . . 'And of course it would be a 
wonderful thing, for both of us,' he said presently, 
*to have a son — or a daughter.' I asked him 
which he would rather it were, a son or a daughter. 
*0h, either,' he answered wearily. It was evident 
that he had misgivings and fears. I tried to reason 
him out of them. He did not, I am thankful to 
say, ever let Mary suspect them. She had no 
misgivings. But it was destined that her child 
should live only for an hour, and that she should 
die in bearing it. 

I had stayed again at the cottage in July, for 
some days. At the end of that month I had gone 
to France, as was my custom, and a week later 
had written to Mary. It was William that an- 
swered this letter, telling me of Mary's death and 
burial. I returned to England next day. William 
and I wrote to each other several times. He had 
not left his home. He stayed there, 'trying,' as he 



WILLIAM AND MARY 279 

said in a grotesque and heart-rending phrase, 'to 
finish a novel.' I saw him in the following 
January. He wTote to me from the Charing Cross 
Hotel, asking me to lunch with him there. After 
our first greetings, there was a silence. He wanted 
to talk of — what he could not talk of. We stared 
helplessly at each other, and then, in the English 
way, talked of things at large. England was 
engaged in the Boer War. William was the sort 
of man whom one would have expected to be 
violently Pro-Boer. I was surprised at his fervour 
for the stronger side. He told me he had tried 
to enlist, but had been rejected on account of his 
eyesight. But there was, he said, a good chance 
of his being sent out, almost immediately, as one 

of the Daily 's special correspondents. 'And 

then,' he exclaimed, *I shall see something of 
it.' I had a presentiment that he would not 
return, and a belief that he did not want to return. 
He did not return. Special correspondents were 
not so carefully shepherded in that war as they 
have since been. They were more at liberty to 
take risks, on behalf of the journals to which they 
were accredited. William was killed a few weeks 
after he had landed at Cape Town. 

And there came, as I have said, a time when I 
did not think of William and Mary often; and 
then a time when I did more often think of them. 



280 AND EVEN NOW 

And especially much did my mind hark back to 
them in the late autumn of last year; for on the 
way to the place I was staying at I had passed the 
little railway station whose name had always linked 
itself for me with the names of those two friends. 
There were but four intervening stations. It was 
not a difficult pilgrimage that I made some days 
later — back towards the past, for that past's sake 
and honour. I had thought I should not remember 
the way, the three miles of way, from the station 
to the cottage; but I found myself remembering 
it perfectly, without a glance at the finger-posts. 
Rain had been falling heavily, driving the late 
leaves off the trees; and everything looked rather 
sodden and misty, though the sun was now shining. 
I had known this landscape only in spring, summer, 
early autumn. Mary had held to a theory that 
at other seasons I could not be acclimatised. But 
there were groups of trees that I knew, even with- 
out their leaves; and farm-houses and small stone 
bridges that had not at all changed. Only what 
mattered was changed. Only what mattered was 
gone. Would what I had come to see be there 
still? In comparison with what it had held, it 
was not much. But I wished to see it, melancholy 
spectacle though it must be for me if it were 
extant, and worse than melancholy if it held some- 
thing new. I began to be sure it had been demo- 
lished, built over. At the corner of the lane that 



WILLIAM AND MARY 281 

had led to it, I was almost minded to explore no 
further, to turn back. But I went on, and sud- 
denly I was at the four-barred iron gate, that I 
remembered, between the laurels. It was rusty, 
and was fastened with a rusty padlock, and beyond 
it there was grass where a winding 'drive' had 
been. From the lane the cottage never had been 
visible, even when these laurels were lower and 
sparser than they were now. Was the cottage 
still standing .f^ Presently, I climbed over the gate, 
and walked through the long grass, and — yes, there 
was Mary's cottage; still there; William's and 
Mary's cottage. Trite enough, I have no doubt 
were the thoughts that possessed me as I stood 
gazing. There is nothing new to be thought about 
the evanescence of human things; but there is 
always much to be felt about it by one who en- 
counters in his maturity some such intimate 
instance and reminder as confronted me, in that 
cold sunshine, across that small wilderness of long 
rank wet grass and weeds. 

Incredibly woebegone and lonesome the house 
would have looked even to one for whom it con- 
tained no memories; all the more because in its 
utter dereliction it looked so durable. Some of the 
stucco had fallen off the walls of the two wings; 
thick flakes of it lay on the discoloured roof of the 
veranda, and thick flakes of it could be seen lying 
in the grass below. Otherwise, there were few 



282 AND EVEN NOW 

signs of actual decay. The sash-window and the 
French window of each wing were shuttered, and, 
from where I was standing, the cream-coloured 
paint of those shutters behind the glass looked 
almost fresh. The latticed windows between had 
all been boarded up from within. The house was 
not to be let perish soon. 

I did not want to go nearer to it; yet I did go 
nearer, step by step, across the wilderness, right 
up to the edge of the veranda itself, and within 
a yard of the front-door. 

I stood looking at that door. I had never 
noticed it in the old days, for then it had always 
stood open. But it asserted itself now, master of 
the threshold. 

It was a narrow door — narrow even for its height, 
which did not exceed mine by more than two 
inches or so; a door that even when it was freshly 
painted must have looked mean. How much 
meaner now, with its paint all faded and mottled, 
cracked and blistered! It had no knocker, not 
even a slit for letters. All that it had was a 
large-ish key -hole. On this my eyes rested; and 
presently I moved to it, stooped down to it, peered 
through it. I had a glimpse of — darkness im- 
penetrable. 

Strange it seemed to me, as I stood back, that 
there the Room was, the remembered Room itself, 
separated from me by nothing but this unremem- 



WILLIAM AND MARY 283 

bered door . . . and a quarter of a century, yes. 
I saw it all, in my mind's eye, just as it had been: 
the way the sunlight came into it through this 
same doorway and through the lattices of these 
same four windows; the way the little bit of a 
staircase came down into it, so crookedly yet so 
confidently; and how uneven the tiled floor was, 
and how low the rafters were, and how littered 
the whole place was with books brought in from 
his den by William, and how bright with flowers 
brought in by Mary from her garden. The rafters, 
the stairs, the tiles, were still existing, changeless 
in despite of cobwebs and dust and darkness, all 
quite changeless on the other side of the door, so 
near to me. I wondered how I should feel if by 
some enchantment the door slowly turned on its 
hinges, letting in light. I should not enter, I felt, 
not even look, so much must I hate to see those 
inner things lasting when all that had given to 
them a meaning was gone from them, taken away 
from them, finally. And yet, why blame them for 
their survival? And how know that nothing of 
the past ever came to them, revisiting, hovering .f^ 
Something — sometimes — perhaps.^ One knew so 
little. How not be tender to what, as it seemed 
to me, perhaps the dead loved .^^ 

So strong in me now was the wish to see again 
all those things, to touch them and, as it were, 
commune with them, and so queerly may the mind 



284 AND EVEN NOW 

be wrought upon in a solitude among memories, 
that there were moments when I almost expected 
that the door would obey my will. I was recalled 
to a clearer sense of reality by something which 
I had not before noticed. In the door-post to the 
right was a small knob of rusty iron — mocking 
reminder that to gain admission to a house one 
does not *wiir the door: one rings the bell — 
unless it is rusty and has quite obviously no one 
to answer it; in which case one goes away. Yet 
I did not go away. The movement that I made, 
in despite of myself, was towards the knob itself. 
But, I hesitated, suppose I did what I half meant 
to do, and there were no sound. That would be 
ghastly. And surely there would be no sound. 
And if sound there were, wouldn't that be worse 
still? My hand drew back, wavered, suddenly 
closed on the knob. I heard the scrape of the 
wire — and then, from somewhere within the heart 
of the shut house, a tinkle. 

It had been the weakest, the puniest of noises. 
It had been no more than is a fledgling's first 
attempt at a twitter. But I was not judging it 
by its volume. Deafening peals from steeples had 
meant less to me than that one single note breaking 
the silence — in there. In there, in the dark, the 
bell that had answered me was still quivering, I 
supposed, on its wire. But there was no one to 
answer it, no footstep to come hither from those 



WILLIAM AND MARY 285 

recesses, making prints in the dust. Well, / could 
answer it; and again my hand closed on the knob, 
unhesitatingly this time, pulling further. That 
was my answer; and the rejoinder to it was more 
than I had thought to hear — a whole quick sequence 
of notes, faint but clear, playful, yet poignantly 
sad, like a trill of laughter echoing out of the past, 
or even merely out of this neighbouring darkness. 
It was so like something I had known, so recognis- 
able and, oh, recognising, that I was lost in wonder. 
And long must I have remained standing at 
that door, for I heard the sound often, often. I 
must have rung again and again, tenaciously, 
vehemently, in my folly. 



ON SPEAKING FRENCH 



ON SPEAKING FRENCH 

1919. 

WHEREVER two Englishmen are speaking 
French to a Frenchman you may safely 
diagnose in the breast of one of the two 
humiliation, envy, ill-will, impotent rage, and a 
dull yearning for vengeance; and you can take it 
that the degree of these emotions is in exact ratio 
to the superiority of the other man's performance. 
In the breast of this other are contempt, malicious 
amusement, conceit, vanity, pity, and joy in osten- 
tation; these, also, exactly commensurable with 
his advantage. Strange and sad that this should be 
so; but so it is. French brings out the worst in all 
of us — all, I mean, but the few, the lamentably 
far too few, who cannot aspire to stammer some 
colloquial phrases of it. 

Even in Victorian days, when England was more 
than geographically, was psychologically an island, 
French made mischief among us, and was one of 
the Devil's favourite ways of setting brother against 
brother. But in those days the bitterness of the 
weaker brother was a little sweetened with dis- 
approval of the stronger. To speak French fluently 

289 



290 AND EVEN NOW 

and idiomatically and with a good accent — or with 
an idiom and accent which to other rough islanders 
seemed good — was a rather suspect accomplish- 
ment, being somehow deemed incompatible with 
civic worth. Thus the weaker ones had not to 
drain the last lees of their shame, and the stronger 
could not wholly rejoice in their strength. But the 
old saving prejudice has now died out (greatly to 
the delight of the Devil), and there seems no chance 
that it will be revived. 

Of other languages no harm comes. None of 
us — none, at any rate, outside the diplomatic 
service — ^has a feeling that he ought to be master 
of them. In every recent generation a few men 
have learned Italian because of the Divina Com- 
media: and a very few others have tried Spanish, 
with a view to Cervantes; and German has pes- 
tered not always vainly the consciences of young 
men gravitating to philosophy or to science. But 
not for social, not for any oral purposes were these 
languages essayed. If an Italian or a Spanish or 
a German came among us he was expected to 
converse in English or spend his time in visiting 
the sights silently and alone. No language except 
French has ever — but stay! There was, at the 
outbreak of the War, a great impulse towards 
Russian. All sorts of people wanted their children 
to be taught Russian without a moment's delay. 
I do not remember that they wanted to learn it 



ON SPEAKING FRENCH 291 

themselves; but they felt an ,extreme need that 
their offspring should hereafter be able to converse 
with moujiks about ikons and the Little Father 
and anything else — if there were anything else — 
that moujiks cared about. This need, however, is 
not felt now. When, so soon after his d^but in 
high politics, M. Kerensky was superseded by 
M. Lenin, Russian was forthwith deemed a not 
quite nice language, even for children. Russia's 
alphabet was withdrawn from the nurseries as 
abruptly as it had been brought in, and le chapeau 
de la cousine du jardinier was re-indued with its 
old importance. 

I doubt whether Russian would for more than 
a little while have seemed to be a likely rival of 
French, even if M. Kerensky had been the strong 
man we hoped he was. The language that suc- 
ceeded to Latin as the official mode of intercourse 
between nations, and as the usual means of talk 
between the well-educated people of any one land 
and those of any other, had an initial advantage 
not quite counterbalanced by the fact that there 
are in Russia myriads of people who speak Russian, 
and a few who can also read and write it. Russian 
may, for aught I know, be a very beautiful lan- 
guage; it may be as lucid and firm in its construc- 
tions as French is, and as musical in sound; I 
know nothing at all about it. Nor do I claim for 
French that it was by its own virtues predestined 



292 AND EVEN NOW 

to the primacy that it holds in Europe. Had 
Italy, not France, been an united and powerful 
nation when Latin became desuete, that primacy 
would of course have been taken by Italian. And 
I cannot help wishing that this had happened. 
Italian, though less elegant, is, for the purpose of 
writing, a richer language than French, and an 
even subtler; and the sound of it spoken is as 
superior to the sound of French as a violin's is to 
a flute's. Still, French does, by reason of its 
exquisite concision and clarity, fill its post of 
honour very worthily, and will not in any near 
future, I think, be thrust down. Many people, 
having regard to the very numerous population of 
the British Empire and the United States, cherish 
a belief that English will presently be cock of the 
world's walk. But we have to consider that 
English is an immensely odd and irregular language, 
that it is accounted very difficult by even the best 
foreign linguists, and that even among native 
writers there are few who can so wield it as to make 
their meaning clear without prolixity — and among 
these few none who has not been well-grounded in 
Latin. By its very looseness, by its way of evok- 
ing rather than defining, suggesting rather than say- 
ing, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional 
poetry. But foreigners don't much want to say 
beautiful haunting things to us; they want to be 
told what limits there are, if any, to the power of 



ON SPEAKING FRENCH 293 

the Lord Mayor; and our rambling endeavours to 
explain do but bemuse and annoy them. They 
find that the rewards of learning English are as 
slight as its difficulties are great, and they warn 
their fellows to this effect. Nor does the oral sound 
of English allay the prejudice thus created. Sooth- 
ing and dear and charming that sound is to English 
ears. But no nation can judge the sound of its 
own language. This can be judged only from 
without, only by ears to which it is unfamiliar. 
And alas, much as we like listening to French or 
Italian, for example, Italians and Frenchmen (if 
we insist on having their opinion) will confess that 
English has for them a rather harsh sound. Alto- 
gether, it seems to me unlikely that the world will 
let English supplant French for international 
purposes, and likely that French will be ousted 
only when the world shall have been so inter- 
nationalised that the children of every land will 
have to learn, besides their own traditional lan- 
guage, some kind of horrible universal lingo be- 
gotten on Volapuk by a congress of the world's 
worst pedants. 

Almost I could wish I had been postponed to 
that era, so much have I suffered through speaking 
French to Frenchmen in the presence of English- 
men. Left alone with a Frenchman, I can stumble 
along, slowly indeed, but still along, and without 
acute sense of ignominy. Especially is this so if 



294 AND EVEN NOW 

I am in France. There is in the atmosphere some- 
thing that braces one for the language. I don't 
say I am not sorry, even so, for my Frenchman. 
But I am sorrier for him in England. And if any 
Englishmen be included in the scene my sympathy 
with him is like to be lost in my agony for myself. 
Would that I had made some such confession 
years ago! O folly of pride! I liked the delusion 
that I spoke French well, a delusion common 
enough among those who had never heard me. 
Somehow I seemed likely to possess that accom- 
plishment. I cannot charge myself with having 
ever claimed to possess it; but I am afraid that 
when any one said to me *I suppose you speak 
French perfectly .^^ ' I allowed the tone of my denial 
to carry with it a hint of mock-modesty. *0h 
no,' I would say, *my French is wretched,' rather 
as though I meant that a member of the French 
Academy would detect lapses from pure classicism 
in it; or 'No, no, mine is, French j)our rire," to 
imply that I was practically bilingual. Thus, 
during the years when I lived in London, I very 
often received letters from hostesses asking me to 
dine on the night when Mme. Chose or M. Tel was 
coming. And always I excused myself — not on 
the plea that I should be useless. This method of 
mine would have been well enough from any but 
the moral standpoint, had not Nemesis, taking her 
stand on that point, sometimes ordained that a 



ON SPEAKING FRENCH 295 

Gaul should be sprung on me. It was not well with 
me then. It was downfall and disaster. 

Strange, how one will trifle with even the most 
imminent doom. On being presented to the Gaul, 
I always hastened to say that I spoke his or her 
language only 'un tout petit peu' — knowing well 
that this poor spark of slang would kindle within 
the breast of M. Tel or the bosom of Mme. Chose 
hopes that must so quickly be quenched in the 
puddle of my incompetence. I offer no excuse for 
so foolish a proceeding. I do but say it is char- 
acteristic of all who are duffers at speaking a 
foreign tongue. Great is the pride they all take 
in airing some little bit of idiom. I recall, among 
many other pathetic exemplifiers of the foible, an 
elderly and rather eminent Greek, who, when I 
was introduced to him, said *I am jolly glad to 
meet you, Sir ! ' and, having said that had nothing 
whatever else to say, and was moreover unable to 
grasp the meaning of anything said by me, though 
I said the simplest things, and said them very 
slowly and clearly. \t is to my credit that in 
speaking English to a foreigner I do always try to 
be helpful. I bear witness against Mme. Chose and 
M. Tel that for me they have never made a like 
effort in their French. It is said that French 
people do not really speak faster than we, and that 
their seeming to do so is merely because of their 
lighter stress on syllables. If this is true, I wish 



296 AND EVEN NOW 

that for my sake they would stress their syllables 
a little more heavily. B^^ their omission of this 
kindness I am so often baffled as to their meaning. 
To be shamed as a talker is bad enough; it is even 
worse to be shamed in the humble refuge of listener. 
To listen and from time to time murmur *C'est 
vrai' may seem safe enough; yet there is danger 
even here. I wish I could forget a certain luncheon 
in the course of which Mme. Chose (that brilliant 
woman) leaned suddenly across the table to me, 
and, with great animation, amidst a general hush, 
launched at me a particularly swift flight of winged 
words. With pensively narrowed eyes, I uttered 
my formula when she ceased. This formula she 
repeated, in a tone even more pensive than mine. 
'Mais je ne le connais pas,' she then loudly ex- 
claimed, ' Je ne connais pas meme le nom. Dites- 
moi de ce jeune homme.' She had, as it presently 
turned out, been asking me which of the younger 
French novelists was most highly thought of by 
English critics; so that her surprise at never having 
heard of the gifted young Sevre was natural 
enough. 

We all — but no, I must not say that we all have 
painful memories of this kind. Some of us can 
understand every word that flies from the lips of 
Mme. Chose or from the mouth of M. Tel. Some 
of us can also talk quickly and well to either of 
these pilgrims; and others can do the trick pass- 



ON SPEAKING FRENCH 297 

ably. But the duffers are in a great grim majority; 
and the mischief that French causes among us is 
mainly manifest, not (I would say) by weaker 
brethren hating the stronger, but by weak ones 
hating the less weak. 

As French is a subject on which we all feel so 
keenly, a point of honour on which we are all so 
sensitive, how comes it that our general achieve- 
ment is so slight.? There was no lack of hopes, 
of plans, that we should excel. In many cases 
Time was taken for us by the forelock, and a French 
nurse installed. But alas! little children are wax 
to receive and to retain. They will be charmingly 
fluent speakers of French within six weeks of 
Mariette's arrival, and will have forgotten every 
word of it within as brief an interval after her 
departure. Later, their minds become more reten- 
tive, though less absorbent; and then, by all 
means, let French be taught. Taught it is. At 
the school where I was reared there were four 
French masters; four; but to what purpose.? 
Their class-rooms were scenes of eternal and in- 
credible pandemonium, filled with whoops and cat- 
calls, with devil's tattoos on desks, and shrill in- 
quiries for the exact date of the battle of Waterloo. 
Nor was the lot of those four men exceptional in 
its horror. From the accounts given to me by 
*old boys' of other schools I have gathered that 
it was the common lot of French masters on our 



298 AND EVEN NOW 

shores; and I have often wondered how much of 
the Anglophobia recurrent among Frenchmen in 
the nineteenth century was due to the grisly tales 
told by those of them who had returned from our 
seminaries to die on their own soil. Since 1914, 
doubtless, French masters have had a very good 
time in England. But, even so, I doubt whether 
they have been achieving much in the way of 
tutelage. With the best will in the world, a boy 
will profit but little by three or four lessons a week 
(which are the utmost that our system allows him). 
What he wants, or at any rate will want, is to be 
able to cope with Mme. Chose. A smattering of the 
irregular verbs will not much avail him in that 
emprise. Not in the dark by-ways of conjugation, 
but on the sunny field of frank social intercourse, 
must he prove his knighthood. I would recom- 
mend that every boy, on reaching the age of six- 
teen, should be hurled across the Channel into the 
midst of some French family and kept there for 
six months. At the end of that time let him be 
returned to his school, there to make up for lost 
time. Time well lost, though: for the boy will 
have become fluent in French, and will ever remain 
so. 

Fluency is all. If the boy has a good ear, he 
will speak with a good accent; but his accent is 
a point about which really he needn't care a jot. 
So is his syntax. Not with these will he win the 



ON SPEAKING FRENCH 299 

heart of Mme. Chose, not with these the esteem of 
M. Tel, not with these anything but a more acrid 
rancour in the silly hostility of his competitors. If 
a foreigner speaks English to us easily and quickly, 
we demand no more of him; we are satisfied, we 
are delighted, and any mistakes of grammar or 
pronunciation do but increase the charm, investing 
with more than its intrinsic quality any good thing 
said — making us marvel at it and exchange fatuous 
glances over it, as we do when a little child says 
something sensible. But heaven protect us from 
the foreigner who pauses, searches, fumbles, revises, 
comes to standstills, has recourse to dumb-show! 
Away with him, by the first train to Dover ! And 
this, we may be sure, is the very train M. Tel and 
Mme. Chose would like to catch whenever they 
meet me — or you? 



LAUGHTER 



LAUGHTER 

ig20. 

MBERGSON, in his well-known essay on 
this theme, says . . . well, he says many 
• things; but none of these, though I have 
just read them, do I clearly remember, nor am I 
sure that in the act of reading I understood any 
of them. That is the worst of these fashionable 
philosophers — or rather, the worst of me. Some- 
how I never manage to read them till they are just 
going out of fashion, and even then I don't seem 
able to cope with them. About twelve years ago, 
when every one suddenly talked to me about 
Pragmatism and William James, I found myself 
moved by a dull but irresistible impulse to try 
Schopenhauer, of whom, years before that, I had 
heard that he was the easiest reading in the world, 
and the most exciting and amusing. I wrestled 
with Schopenhauer for a day or so, in vain. Time 
passed; M. Bergson appeared 'and for his hour 
was lord of the ascendant'; I tardily tackled 
William James. I bore in mind, as I approached 
him, the testimonials that had been lavished on 
him by all my friends. Alas, I was insensible to 

303 



304 AND EVEN NOW 

his thrillingness. His gaiety did not make me gay. 
His crystal clarity confused me dreadfully. I could 
make nothing of William James. And now, in the 
fullness of time, I have been floored by M. Bergson. 
It distresses me, this failure to keep pace with 
the leaders of thought as they pass into oblivion. 
It makes me wonder whether I am, after all, an 
absolute fool. Yet surely I am not that. Tell me 
of a man or a woman, a place or an event, real or 
fictitious : surely you will find me a fairly intelligent 
listener. Any such narrative will present to me 
some image, and will stir me to not altogether 
fatuous thoughts. Come to me in some grievous 
difficulty : I will talk to you like a father, even like 
a lawyer. I'll be hanged if I haven't a certain 
mellow wisdom. But if you are by way of weaving 
theories as to the nature of things in general, and 
if you want to try those theories on some one 
who will luminously confirm them or powerfully 
rend them, I must, with a hang-dog air, warn you 
that I am not your man. I suffer from a strong 
suspicion that things in general cannot be ac- 
counted for through any formula or set of formulae, 
and that any one philosophy, howsoeyer new, is no 
better than another. That is in itself a sort of philos- 
ophy, and I suspect it accordingly; but it has for me 
the merit of being the only one I can make head or 
tail of. If you try to expound any other philo- 
sophic system to me, you will find not merely 



LAUGHTER 305 

that I can detect no flaw in it (except the one great 
flaw just suggested), but also that I haven't, after 
a minute or two, the vaguest notion of what you 
are driving at. *Very well,' you say, * instead of 
trying to explain all things all at once, I will explain 
some little, simple, single thing.' It was for sake 
of such shorn lambs as myself, doubtless, that 
M. Bergson sat down and wrote about — Laughter. 
But I have profited by his kindness no more than 
if he had been treating of the Cosmos. I cannot 
tread even a limited space of air. I have a gross 
satisfaction in the crude fact of being on hard 
ground again, and I utter a coarse peal of — 
Laughter. 

At least, I say I do so. In point of fact, I have 
merely smiled. Twenty years ago, ten years ago, 
I should have laughed, and have professed to you 
that I had merely smiled. A very young man is 
not content to be very young, nor even a young 
man to be young : he wants to share the dignity of 
his elders. There is no dignity in laughter, there 
is much of it in smiles. Laughter is but a joyous 
surrender, smiles give token of mature criticism. 
It may be that in the early ages of this world there 
was far more laughter than is to be heard now, 
and that aeons hence laughter will be obsolete, 
and smiles universal — every one, always, mildly, 
sHghtly, smiling. But it is less useful to speculate 
as to mankind's past and future than to observe 



306 AND EVEN NOW 

men. And you will have observed with me in the 
club-room that young men at most times look 
solemn, whereas old men or men of middle age 
mostly smile; and also that those young men do 
often laugh loud and long among themselves, 
while we others — the gayest and best of us in the 
most favourable circumstances — seldom achieve 
more than our habitual act of smiling. Does the 
sound of that laughter jar on us.^ Do we liken it 
to the crackling of thorns under a pot? Let us 
do so. There is no cheerier sound. But let us not 
assume it to be the laughter of fools because we 
sit quiet. It is absurd to disapprove of what one 
envies, or to wish a good thing were no more be- 
cause it has passed out of our possession. 

But (it seems that I must begin every paragraph 
by questioning the sincerity of what I have just 
said) has the gift of laughter been withdrawn from 
me.f^ I protest that I do still, at the age of forty- 
seven, laugh often and loud and long. But not, I 
believe, so long and loud and often as in my less 
smiling youth. And I am proud, nowadays, of 
laughing, and grateful to any one who makes me 
laugh. That is a bad sign. I no longer take 
laughter as a matter of course. I realise, even after 
reading M. Bergson on it, how good a thing it is. 
I am qualified to praise it. 

As to what is most precious among the accessories 
to the world we live in, different men hold different 



LAUGHTER 307 

opinionsT^ There are people whom the sea de- 
presses, whom mountains exhilarate. Personally, 
I want the sea always — some not populous edge 
of it for choice; and with it sunshine, and wine, 
and a little music. My friend on the mountain 
yonder is of tougher fibre and sterner outlook, 
disapproves of the sea's laxity and instability^ 
has no ear for music and no palate for the grape, 
and regards the sun as a rather enervating in- 
stitution, like central heating in a house. What he 
likes is a grey day and the wind in his face; crags 
at a great altitude; and a flask of whisky. Yet 
I think that even he, if we were trying to determine 
from what inner sources mankind derives the 
greatest pleasure in life, would agree with me that 
only the emotion of love takes higher rank than 
the emotion of laughter. Both these emotions are 
partly mental, partly physical. It is said that the 
mental symptoms of love are wholly physical in 
origin. They are not the less ethereal for that. 
The physical sensations of laughter, on the other 
hand, are reached by a process whose starting- 
point is in the mind. They are not the less * glori- 
ously of our clay.' There is laughter that goes 
so far as to lose all touch with its motive, and to 
exist only, grossly, in itself. This is laughter at its 
best. A man to whom such laughter has often 
been granted may happen to die in a work-house. 
No matter. I will not admit that he has failed in 



308 AND EVEN NOW 

life. Another man, who has never laughed thus, 
may be buried in Westminster Abbey, leaving more 
than a million pounds overhead. What then? I 
regard him as a failure. 

Nor does it seem to me to matter one jot how 
such laughter is achieved. Humour may rollick 
on high planes of fantasy or in depths of silliness. 
To many people it appeals only from those depths. 
If it appeal to them irresistibly, they are more 
enviable than those who are sensitive only to the 
finer kind of joke and not so sensitive as to be 
mastered and dissolved by it. Laughter is a thing 
to be rated according to its own intensity. 

Many years ago I wrote an essay in which I 
poured scorn on the fun purveyed by the music 
halls, and on the great public for which that fun 
was quite good enough. I take that callow scorn 
back. I fancy that the fun itself was better than 
it seemed to me, and might not have displeased 
me if it had been wafted to me in private, in presence 
of a few friends. A public crowd, because of a lack 
of broad impersonal humanity in me, rather in- 
sulates than absorbs me. Amidst the guffaws of a 
thousand strangers I become unnaturally grave. 
If these people were the entertainment, and I the 
audience, I should be sympathetic enough. But 
to be one of them is a position that drives me 
spiritually aloof. Also, there is to me something 
rather dreary in the notion of going anywhere 



LAUGHTER 309 

for the specific purpose of being amused. I prefer 
that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can 
it master and dissolve me. And in this respect, 
at any rate, I am not peculiar. In music halls and 
such places, you may hear loud laughter, but — 
not see silent laughter, not see strong men weak, 
helpless, suffering, gradually convalescent, danger- 
ously relapsing. Laughter at its greatest and best 
is not there. 

To such laughter nothing is more propitious than 
an occasion that demands gravity. To have good 
reason for not laughing is one of the surest aids. 
Laughter rejoices in bonds. If music halls were 
schoolrooms for us, and the comedians were our 
schoolmasters, how much less talent would be 
needed for giving us how much more joy! Even 
in private and accidental intercourse, few are the 
men whose humour can reduce us, be we never so 
susceptible, to paroxysms of mirth. I will wager 
that nine tenths of the world's best laughter is 
laughter at, not with. And it is the people set in 
authority over us that touch most surely our sense 
of the ridiculous. Freedom is a good thing, but we 
lose through it golden moments. The school- 
master to his pupils, the monarch to his courtiers,' 
the editor to his staff — how priceless they are! 
Reverence is a good thing, and part of its value 
is that the more we revere a man, the more sharply 
are we struck by anything in him (and there is 



310 AND EVEN NOW 

always much) that is incongruous with his great- 
ness. And herein hes one of the reasons why as 
we grow older we laugh less. The men we es- 
teemed so great are gathered to their fathers. Some 
of our coevals may, for aught we know, be very 
great, but good heavens! we can't esteem them so. 
Of extreme laughter I know not in any annals 
a more satisfying example than one that is to be 
found in Moore's Life of Byron. Both Byron and 
Moore were already in high spirits when, on an 
evening in the spring of 1813, they went 'from 
some early assembly' to Mr. Rogers' house in 
St. James's Place and were regaled there with an 
impromptu meal. But not high spirits alone would 
have led the two young poets to such excess of 
laughter as made the evening so very memorable. 
Luckily they both venerated Rogers (strange as it 
may seem to us) as the greatest of living poets. 
Luckily, too, Mr. Rogers was ever the kind of man, 
the coldly and quietly suave kind of man, with 
whom you don't take liberties, if you can help it — 
with whom, if you canH help it, to take liberties 
is in itself a most exhilarating act. And he had 
just received a presentation copy of Lord Thurlow's 
latest book, 'Poems on Several Occasions.' The 
two young poets found in this elder's Muse much 
that was so execrable as to be delightful. They 
were soon, as they turned the pages, held in throes 
of laughter, laughter that was but intensified by 



LAUGHTER 311 

the endeavours of their correct and nettled host to 
point out the genuine merits of his friend's work. 
And then suddenly — oh joy! — 'we lighted,' Moore 
records, ' on the discovery that our host, in addition 
to his sincere approbation of some of this book's 
contents, had also the motive of gratitude for 
standing by its author, as one of the poems was a 
warm and, I need not add, well-deserved panegyric 
on himself. We were, however' — the narrative 
has an added charm from Tom Moore's demure 
care not to offend or compromise the still-surviving 
Rogers — *too far gone in nonsense for even this 
eulogy, in which we both so heartily agreed, to stop 
us. The opening line of the poem, was, as well as 
I can recollect, "When Rogers o'er this labour 
bent"; and Lord Byron undertook to read it 
aloud; — but he found it impossible to get beyond 
the first two words. Our laughter had now in- 
creased to such a pitch that nothing could restrain 
it. Two or three times he began; but no sooner 
had the words "When Rogers" passed his lips, 
than our fit burst out afresh, — till even Mr. Rogers 
himself, with all his feeling of our injustice, found it 
impossible not to join us; and we were, at last, 
all three in such a state of inextinguishable laughter, 
that, had the author himself been of our party, 
I question much whether he could have resisted 
the infection.' The final fall and dissolution of 
Rogers, Rogers behaving as badly as either of 



312 AND EVEN NOW 

tnem, is all that was needed to give perfection to 
this heart-warming scene. I like to think that 
on a certain night in spring, year after year, three 
ghosts revisit that old room and (without, I hope, 
inconvenience to Lord Northcliff e, who may happen 
to be there) sit rocking and writhing in the grip 
of that old shared rapture. Uncanny? Well, 
not more so than would have seemed to Byron 
and Moore and Rogers the notion that more than a 
hundred years away from them was some one 
joining in their laughter — as I do. 

Alas, I cannot join in it more than gently. 
To. imagine a scene, however vividly, does not give 
us the sense of being or even of having been, 
present at it. Indeed, the greater the glow of the 
scene reflected, the sharper is the pang of our 
realisation that we were not there, and of our 
annoyance that we weren't. Such a pang comes 
to me with special force whenever my fancy posts 
itself outside the Temple's gate in Fleet Street, 
and there, at a late hour of the night of May 10th, 
1773, observes a gigantic old man laughing wildly, 
but having no one with him to share and aggrandise 
his emotion. Not that he is alone; but the young 
man beside him laughs only in politeness and is 
inwardly puzzled, even shocked. Boswell has a 
keen, an exquisitely keen, scent for comedy, for the 
fun that is latent in fine shades of character; 
but imaginative burlesque, anything that borders 



LAUGHTER 313 

on lovely nonsense, he was not formed to savour. 
All the more does one revel in his account of what 
led up to the moment when Johnson *to support 
himself, laid hold of one of the posts at the side of 
the foot pavement, and sent forth peals so loud 
that in the silence of the night his voice seemed to 
resound from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch.' 

No evening ever had an unlikelier ending. The 
omens were all for gloom. Johnson had gone to 
dine at General Paoli's but was so ill that he had 
to leave before the meal was over. Later he 
managed to go to Mr. Chambers' rooms in the 
Temple. *He continued to be very ill' there, 
but gradually felt better, and * talked with a noble 
enthusiasm of keeping up the representation of 
respectable families,' and was great on *the dignity 
and propriety of male succession.' Among his 
listeners, as it happened, was a gentleman for whom 
Mr. Chambers had that day drawn up a will devis- 
ing his estate to his three sisters. The news of this 
might have been expected to maJ^e Johnson violent 
in wrath. But no, for some reason he grew violent 
only in laughter, and insisted thenceforth on calling 
that gentleman The Testator and chaffing him 
without mercy. 'I daresay he thinks he has 
done a mighty thing. He won't stay till he gets 
home to his seat in the country, to produce this 
wonderful deed: he'll call up the landlord of the 
first inn on the road; and after a suitable preface 



314 AND EVEN NOW 

upon mortality and the uncertainty of life, will tell 
him that he should not delay in making his will; 
and Here, Sir, will he say, is my will, which I have 
just made, with the assistance of one of the ablest 
lawyers in the kingdom; and he will read it to 
him. He believes he has made this will; but he 
did not make it; you. Chambers, made it for 
him. I hope you have had more conscience than 
to make him say "being of sound understanding!" 
ha, ha, ha! I hope he has left me a legacy. I'd 
have his will turned into verse, like a ballad.' 
These flights annoyed Mr. Chambers, and are re- 
corded by Boswell with the apology that he wishes 
his readers to be * acquainted with the slightest 
occasional characteristics of so eminent a man.' 
Certainly, there is nothing ridiculous in the fact of 
a man making a will. But this is the measure 
of Johnson's achievement. He had created 
gloriously much out of nothing at all. There he 
sat, old and ailing and unencouraged by the com- 
pany, but soaring higher and higher in absurdity, 
more and more rejoicing, and still soaring and 
rejoicing after he had gone out into the night with 
Boswell, till at last in Fleet Street his paroxysms 
were too much for him and he could no more. 
Echoes of that huge laughter come ringing down 
the ages. But is there also perhaps a note of 
sadness for us in them? Johnson's endless 
sociability came of his inherent melancholy: he 
could not bear to be alone; and his very mirth 



LAUGHTER 315 

was but a mode of escape from the dark thoughts 
within him. Of these the thought of death was the 
m.ost dreadful to him, and the most insistent. He 
was forever wondering how death would come to 
him, and how he would acquit himself in the ex- 
treme moment. A later but not less devoted 
Anglican, meditating on his own end, wrote in his 
diary that 'to die in church appears to be a great 
euthanasia, but not,' he quaintly and touchingly 
added, 'at a time to disturb worshippers.' Both 
the sentiment here expressed and the reservation 
drawn would have been as characteristic of Johnson 
as they were of Gladstone. But to die of laughter 
— this, too, seems to me a great euthanasia; and 
I think that for Johnson to have died thus, that 
night in Fleet Street, would have been a grand 
ending to ' a life radically wretched.' Well, he was 
destined to outlive another decade; and, selfishly, 
who can wish such a life as his, or such a Life as 
Boswell's, one jot shorter.^ 

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all 
the countless folk who have lived before our time 
on this planet not one is known in history or in 
legend as having died of laughter. Strange, too, 
that not to one of all the characters in romance 
has such an end been allotted. Has it ever struck 
you what a chance Shakespeare missed when he 
was finishing the Second Part of King Henry the 
Fourth .f^ Falstaff was not the man to stand 
cowed and bowed while the new young king 



316 AND EVEN NOW 

lectured him and cast him off. Little by little, as 
Hal proceeded in that portentous allocution, the 
humour of the situation would have mastered old 
Sir John. His face, blank with surprise at first, 
would presently have glowed and widened, and his 
whole bulk have begun to quiver. Lest he should 
miss one word, he would have mastered himself. 
But the final words would have been the signal for 
release of all the roars pent up in him; the welkin 
would have rung; the roars, belike, would have 
gradually subsided in dreadful rumblings of more 
than utterable or conquerable mirth. Thus and 
thus only might his life have been rounded off with 
dramatic fitness, secundum ipsius naturam. He 
never should have been left to babble of green fields 
and die * an it had been any christom child.' 

Falstaff is a triumph of comedic creation because 
we are kept laughing equally at and with him. 
Nevertheless, if I had the choice of sitting with him 
at the Boar's Head or with Johnson at the Turk's, 
I shouldn't hesitate for an instant. The agility of 
Falstaff' s mind gains much of its effect by contrast 
with the massiveness of his body; but in contrast 
with Johnson's equal agility is Johnson's moral as 
well as physical bulk. His sallies 'tell' the more 
startlingly because of the noble weight of character 
behind them : they are the better because he makes 
them. In Falstaff there isn't this final incongruity 
and element of surprise. Falstaff is but a sub- 
limated sample of 'the funny man.' We cannot 



LAUGHTER 317 

therefore, laugh so greatly with him as with John- 
son. (Nor even at him; because we are not tickled 
so much by the weak points of a character whose 
points are all weak ones; also because we have no 
reverence trying to impose restraint upon us.) 
Still, Falstaif has indubitably the power to con- 
vulse us. I don't mean we ever are convulsed in 
reading Henry the Fourth. No printed page, alas, 
can thrill us to extremities of laughter. These are 
ours only if the mirthmaker be a living man whose 
jests we hear as they come fresh from his own lips. 
All I claim for Falstaif is that he would be able 
to convulse us if he were alive and accessible. 
Few, as I have said, are the humourists who can 
induce this state. To master and dissolve us, to 
give us the joy of being worn down and tired out 
with laughter, is a success to be won by no man 
save in virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter 
becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There 
must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go 
humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester 
must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to 
it, twisting it this way and that, and making it 
yield magically all manner of strange and precious 
things, one after another, without pause. He must 
have invention keeping pace with utterance. He 
must be inexhaustible. Only so can he exhaust us. 
I have a friend whom I would praise. There are 
many other of my friends to whom I am indebted 
for much laughter; but I do believe that if all of 



318 AND EVEN NOW 

them sent in their bills to-morrow and all of them 
overcharged me not a little, the total of all those 
totals would be less appalling than that which 
looms in my own vague estimate of what I owe to 
Comus. Comus I call him here in observance of 
the line drawn between public and private virtue, 
and in full knowledge that he would of all men be 
the least glad to be quite personally thanked and 
laurelled in the market-place for the hours he has 
made memorable among his cronies. No one is so 
diffident as he, no one so self-postponing. Many 
people have met him again and again without 
faintly suspecting ' anything much ' in him. Many 
of his acquaintances — friends, too — relatives, even 
— ^have lived and died in the belief that he was quite 
ordinary. Thus is he the more greatly valued by 
his cronies. Thus do we pride ourselves on pos- 
sessing some curious right quality to which alone 
he is responsive. But it would seem that either 
this asset of ours or its effect on him is intermittent. 
He can be dull and null enough with us sometimes — 
a mere asker of questions, or drawer of comparisons 
between this and that brand of cigarettes, or full 
expatiator on the merits of some new patent razor. 
A whole hour and more may be wasted in such 
humdrum and darkness. And then — something 
will have happened. There has come a spark in the 
murk; a flame now, presage of a radiance: Comus 
has begun. His face is a great part of his equip- 
ment. A cast of it might be somewhat akin to the 



LAUGHTER 319 

comic mask of the ancients; but no cast could be 
worthy of it; mobihty is the essence of it. It 
flickers and shifts in accord to the matter of his 
discourse; it contracts and it expands; is there 
anything its elastic can't express? Comus would 
be eloquent even were he dumb. And he is melli- 
fluous. His voice, while he develops an idea or 
conjures up a scene, takes on a peculiar richness 
and unction. If he be describing an actual scene, 
voice and face are adaptable to those of the actual 
persons therein. But it is not in such mimicry 
that he excels. As a reporter he has rivals. For 
the most part, he moves on a higher plane than 
that of mere fact: he imagines, he creates, giving 
you not a person, but a type, a synthesis, and not 
what anywhere has been, but what anywhere 
might be — what, as one feels, for all the absurdity 
of it, just would be. He knows his world well, and 
nothing human is alien to him, but certain skeins of 
life have a special hold on him, and he on them. In 
his youth he wished to be a clergyman ; and over the 
clergy of all grades and denominations his genius 
hovers and swoops and ranges with a special 
mastery. Lawyers he loves less; yet the legal 
mind seems to lie almost as wide-open to him as the 
sacerdotal; and the legal manner in all its phases 
he can unerringly burlesque. In the minds of 
journalists, diverse journalists, he is not less 
thoroughly at home, so that of the wild contin- 
gencies imagined by him there is none about which 



320 AND EVEN NOW 

he cannot reel off an oral * leader' or 'middle' in 
the likeliest style, and with as much ease as he can 
preach a High Church or Low Church sermon on it. 
Nor are his improvisations limited by prose. If a 
theme call for nobler treatment, he becomes an 
unflagging fountain of ludicrously adequate blank- 
verse. Or again, he may deliver himself in rhyme. 
There is no form of utterance that comes amiss to 
him for interpreting the human comedy, or for 
broadening the farce into which that comedy is 
turned by him. Nothing can stop him when once 
he is in the vein. No appeals move him. He goes 
from strength to strength while his audience is 
more and more piteously debilitated. 

What a gift to have been endowed with ! What 
a power to wield! And how often I have envied 
Comus! But this envy of him has never taken 
root in me. His mind laughs, doubtless, at his own 
conceptions; but not his body. And if you tell 
him something that you have been sure will con- 
vulse him you are likely to be rewarded with no 
more than a smile betokening that he sees the point. 
Incomparable laughter-giver, he is not much a 
laugher. He is vintner, not toper. I would there- 
fore not change places with him. I am well con- 
tent to have been his beneficiary during thirty 
years, and to be so for as many more as may be 
given us. 



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